


Planes, Trains and Automobiles

by agoodwoman



Series: Fac Fortia et Patere [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, RST, Spoilers, The X Files - Freeform, season 7, season of secret sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 66,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting home proves to be challenging for our favourite agents. Set during Season 7, after Millennium. Chapters 1-3 are Mature, Chapter's 4-10 are explicit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He told her, when they were waiting for a delayed flight in Delaware or Texas, as a couple was arguing near them how exhausting that must be.

  
Scully hadn't slept for two days on that case, doing autopsies back to back and only managing a quick nap in the morgue lounge. "As opposed to what _we_ are doing?"

  
Mulder rubbed his thick hand across the tense muscles in her upper back. "I couldn't possibly think of subjecting anyone to something as dangerous as getting involved with me."

  
Scully raised an eyebrow and tried to shrug off his touch.

  
"Here me out Scully. Let me rub your shoulders," he implored.

She would normally say no, because that went against the rules of their partnership. Not the FBI, but how much physical contact Fox Mulder and Dana Scully allow with one another. She nodded slightly and he started kneading the tense muscles at the base of her neck and on her shoulders.

" _Jeez_ Scully, why didn't you use the magic fingers or something?"

  
"My room didn't have the magic fingers," she mumbled as her head dropped forward. She should let him do this kind of thing more often.

  
Yes, it was her that tried to minimize the physical contact. Mulder was always pushing to know how she felt, touch her and push past her boundaries. It was a strange little game they played because if she started to get too comfortable he would run, he would flee. When he returned her walls were back up and he set out getting through them again.

  
"Okay so I should step it up on my massage quota?" He asked with a chuckle.

  
"Yes, I think I need these weekly, especially on our out of town cases," she said, letting her head roll to the left as he worked the tight muscles on her right.

  
" _Scully_ ," he said in reverence.

  
"You were saying?" She tried to bring his mind out of the gutter from picturing massaging her underneath him as he worked his fingers.

  
He knew she had a woman's form, he knew what women could do and what he could do with those bodies but sometimes, it was like those things were connected in her. He swung from over-confidently sexual, throwing innuendo to being completely unaware when a woman was thrusting her breasts in his face for his attention.

  
"Right," he cleared his throat. "Well, I think the emotional and physical requirements of a relationship outside of my job, with any random woman, would be far too dangerous."

  
"For whom?" She asked.

  
Mulder worked his skilled fingers down her back and she suddenly felt grateful for discarding her jackets. "For any woman. You're the only person who knows what happens on my job day to day. No matter what the math geeks in accounting think when they work on our requisition files, the secretaries in the steno pool or the guys in the VCU think, if I talked about my job on a date with a woman, she'd be calling to have me locked up."

  
Scully merely nodded. She avoided talking about her job when she was at any social function for work or an obligation from her family. She could talk about her parents, growing up with three siblings, medical school, getting recruited to the FBI, latest medical cases that were of interest to her and things in the news. Never about work.

  
"So, you're just never going to date?" She asked. She wasn't going to date but she felt her commitment to him was more obvious than his. 

  
"Well, I have you, I have the X Files."

  
She looked at him as though he was implying something more about their relationship.

  
The whole mess in his apartment hallway, Antarctica, then Diana coming into their lives was like a decontamination shower of the roles they had assumed after her abduction. She could feel things changing between them but neither of them had said it out loud. Certainly not in the middle of an airport in Des Moines...Where were they? Middle America, USA.

  
"Don't look at me like that, Scully," he said and dropped his hands into his lap. "You know how I feel."

  
She thought about when he told her he loved her and she said 'Oh, brother.' She thought about the way he treated her when Diana was around, like a pesky science lab partner who was making him look uncool around his cheerleader girlfriend.

  
"I suppose in the non-widely defined use of the term, I might have an idea," she said with a hint of kindness but more confusion.

  
Suddenly she felt like some consolation prize. The women he wanted couldn't be brought into this so he had her. He must have been able to tell with the look on her face because he took her hand.

  
"Scully..."

 

_*Flight 786 out of kerreeaachhh! Will now be boarding!*_

  
"Is that us?" She pulled her hand away from his and looked at their tickets. As per usual, they donned their coats, he handed her the black carry on that matched her sensible luggage and they pushed their way through the crowd to stand in line.

  
The couple who were fighting across from them earlier were now at a stalemate. He was trying to make eye contact with her, she would not look at him. Mulder smiled at the irony. He wanted little complications with women but his partner was the most complicated relationship he had.

  
Up in the air, as they sat in their respective seats, Scully typed away at her laptop, working on their report while Mulder doodled next to the notes he had out for her to reference.

  
"You're not my consolation prize you know," he said and stood up to get in line for the bathroom.

  
Scully stared after him and wondered if he could still read minds.

  
From her seat she could see the couple still arguing. 

 

" _He_ gives her back rubs. When was the last time you gave me a back rub without expecting _something_ in return?" The woman was gesturing with a well manicured hand towards Scully.

  
Suddenly her face felt flush. They weren't anyone anybody should be modeling their relationship after. First of all, she could argue any other romantic relationship involved more sex than hers did with Mulder.

  
Were they romantic? He gave her chocolates on Valentine's day, following their experience in the haunted house. He made overt gestures that were both boyish and confusing.

 

Mulder returned from the bathroom with chocolate covered almonds and a banana. She tore her eyes away from the couple, who were suddenly hugging tightly. Getting lost in her head had forced her to miss the conversation and how they mended their fences.

 

"How-"

  
"I told the flight attendant my wife needed sustenance since we were trapped in that gate for over an hour and a half," he said and suddenly produced a bag of crackers for himself. He lowered his tray table and moved his notes back toward him.

  
"I'll read, you type," he offered.

  
Scully closed her laptop after saving her document and stashed it away in her case under her seat. "I would rather work on it tomorrow when we are on the clock. Let's just enjoy our snack, okay?"

  
"Aren't you curious why I referred to you as my wife, Scully?" He asked with a mouth full of crackers. "My significant other? Do you want to know what I tell the girls in the steno-pool?"

  
"What is _with_  you today?" She looked at him with disbelief.

  
Mulder swallowed the crackers, smiled at her shyly before he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. He produced a bottle of water, cracked it open and handed it to her. "See? I can be nice."

  
Before she could respond the flight attendant came on the PA system.

 _  
"Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you know we appreciate you in choosing American Airlines. Please be advised we will be making an unscheduled stop in St Louis due to technical difficulties with our aircraft._ "

  
A loud groan resigned through the cabin and Scully closed her eyes in frustration. She would not cry from frustration. She would not scream. She would not shout. Scully's didn't do that.

  
Mulder put one hand reassuringly on her knee and let it linger there longer than usual. He must be as tired as she was. Last time he was this touchy they had shared a six pack after three long days on a case while going over notes for their report in her hotel room. She laughed at what she thought was an inappropriate side note on Mulder's legal pad and he found it so adorable he hugged her a beat too long. He ran from her room not shortly after that. He would defend it by saying he had to pee and she would point out that she had a perfectly usable bathroom in her room.

  
It had been decided that the entire flight would spend the night at the airport hotel. Each passenger was given a voucher as they exited the plane. Mulder shoved his and Scully's into his pants pocket and carried her shoulder-bag for her as she moved slowly to the shuttle. Their luggage would be transported over to the hotel so that saved them a trip from baggage claim.

  
"A new flight was booked for us at 8:30 am," Mulder reported as he joined her in line for the shuttle. "Cindy told me we would be home by noon."

  
"Who?" She asked.

  
"The stewardess who got me the almonds and banana," Mulder replied as they started to board. "She's based out of D.C. Really nice."

  
"Change your mind on the whole 'bringing someone from the outside' idea, Mulder?"

  
She sat down first on the small bus. The smell of tired bodies filling the car and she looked up at him sadly as he handed her one of their bags.

  
"Cindy is probably my mother's age and I think if I was going to pick anyone it wouldn't be someone who worked with handsome pilots day in and day out. Too much competition."

  
Scully huffed out a laugh and turned her head toward the window. Scully's didn't throw fits but they all had a jealous streak.

  
The bumpy ride to the hotel didn't let either of them sleep and they were piling out of yet another car to wait in yet another line.

  
"Give me the carry-ons and the vouchers for our rooms, you can wait for our bags," Scully instructed and held out her hand.

  
Mulder slapped her palm with one hand as he fished out their vouchers with the other. He handed her the vouchers and waited at the curb as Scully marched into the hotel to wait in, yet another, line.

  
The air had cooled considerably and he donned his long overcoat. Mulder looked up and tried to spot as many constellations as he could in sixty seconds. It was a game he used to play with Samantha on the vineyard. Being out of the way at the air port, the sky mainly clear, he could almost make out the Big Dipper. He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them. He tried to spot Andromeda next to Cassiopeia.

  
"The missus inside?"

  
The man who was arguing with his wife earlier motioned with his head toward the door. Mulder had named him Ted in his head because he probably golfed on the weekends and drank Bud Light.

  
"Just getting the room," Mulder replied.

  
'Ted' looked at this watch and whistled. "I tell you, if we could just get back to Arlington I could avoid getting into the doghouse one more day."

  
Mulder found it odd but curious when people were open with perfect strangers however he assumed it was safer than telling someone who could hold it against you later.

  
"Got your foot in it?" Mulder said as he looked around for the luggage shuttle.

  
"How would you tell your missus and her identical twin apart if they were dressed the same and had the same damn haircut?" He asked.

  
Mulder thought for a minute but the only answers forthcoming weren't ones he would repeat in front of Scully so he shrugged. "Did you hug the wrong woman?"

  
"Worse," 'Ted' replied and shook his head.

  
Mulder was worried this man was about to tell him his marital problems but luckily the luggage cart arrived in time. Two airport porters unloaded the plane's luggage quickly and Mulder found their bags next to one another on next to the last trolley.

  
"Wanna grab a beer?" 'Ted' asked, nodding towards the restaurant/bar to the left of the lobby.

  
"I think you need to face the firing squad," Mulder said with a shake of his head and found Scully at the front desk, obviously upset.

  
"I don't understand what the problem is," he heard her saying as he set their bags down. "My partner and I need separate rooms."

  
"Honey, I don't know what to tell you," the front clerk said. "It was a last minute landing for an emergency stop. Not high priority. They booked the rooms based on the ticket reservations. You and Mr Mulder are going to have to bunk up for the night."

 

"What size is the bed?" Mulder asked.

 

The clerk gave Mulder a quick smile and Scully tried not to roll her eyes. "One queen. We don't have any rooms with two doubles left. The medical conference has us booked up."

 

Scully sighed and handed over her bureau credit card. "Fine."

  
"Your card will only be charged the tax and any room service charges." The clerk smiled at them politely and ran the credit card through the machine.

  
Mulder took the hotel keys and followed Scully to the bay of elevators. He wasn't going to apologize for the plane having mechanical difficulties or them having to share a room. Neither of these things were under his control. On the bright side, they were also staying at one of the nicer hotels for their recent history. He wasn't being an asshole by any means, but he learned a while ago that apologizing unnecessarily to Scully for any of these things only went so far. He needed to get her food and leave her to have a long bath in solitude.

  
"Maybe they'll have a nice tub," Mulder said as they waited for the elevator to come down.

  
"These ones are great," a man in a disheveled suit said from behind him, carrying two opened bottles of beer. "Big enough for two."

  
Scully kept her eyes on the elevator but she could tell Mulder was making a face. If anything, she hoped this room at least had a pull out couch so Mulder wouldn't spend the night hogging the bed. The man took up as much space in her professional life as he did in her personal life.

  
They walked down the long corridor and found their room at the end of the hall on the 8th floor. Scully thought about the coincidences of the last few days that lead to this moment and decided that there was nothing she could do about it besides pout. If she pouted in the tub at least she wouldn't have to deal with Mulder.

  
"Want me to order some food while you have a bath?" Mulder asked, kicking off his shoes near the front door.

  
Scully nodded slowly and set her bag on the loveseat at the end of the room near the tall windows. It wasn't long enough for either of them to comfortably sleep on, she noted and pulled out a clean pair of underwear, and her pjs from her bag.

  
"What do you feel like?" Mulder asked, picking up the menu. He looked at his watch and perused the items again. "Salad, fries, share a sandwich?"

  
"Please," Scully confirmed as she pulled out her toiletries. "Maybe something to drink?"

 

Mulder pulled out his personal credit card and nodded. "Beer? Wine?"

  
"I don't care," Scully said and shut the door on the bathroom.

  
A double order of fries, a large salad and a clubhouse for them to share ordered, Mulder then asked about the beverages. As it turns out, the restaurant wouldn't sell Mulder any alcohol but they did suggest using the liquor store across the street.

  
Mulder knocked gently on the bathroom door and it opened a crack. He could hear the large bathtub filling and Scully walked into his sight-line in her bra.

  
His first instinct was to pull his head away and give her some damn privacy. He could also argue it was nothing he hadn't seen before but this was different. So, against his better judgment his eyes slowly moved back in front of the door and he took in the sight of her. The creamy skin over the toned muscles with the Ouroboros to the right of her lower back.

  
He looked away as she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her silky pink panties and pressed his back against the wall next to the doorway.

  
"Scully," he called. "I'm going to run across the street for some wine or something."

  
He could hear her sinking into the tub and a hiss escape her lips. "Okay."

  
Being overtired, he knew his defenses against her feminine wiles would be down. Sometimes it meant a few extra hugs from him. Sometimes it meant a lingering hand on his arm from her. Either way they always had their respective hotel rooms or homes. Confined spaces usually lead to middle of the night snuggling that both enjoyed far too much to say they were just friends anymore.

 

In his round about way he was hoping telling her that looking for someone outside of their work meant he was only looking at her now. They often had conversations about one thing that meant other things. He called the fighting couple exhausting because he couldn't imagine getting to know anyone as well as he knew Scully. He put in the time, he put in the effort and dammit he loved her. He told her as much.

 

"You guys got any good white?" Mulder asked the attendant as he entered the liquor store. The clerk shook his head and pointed to a stack of boxes of wine. "Crap."

 

"Yeah, they don't really sell the good stuff here," he said boredly and took two six packs from 'Ted.'

 

"Last chance to join me for a beer," 'Ted' offered.

 

"We've got food coming," Mulder replied and went over to the gin. Mulder scratched at the stubble on his chin. She liked gin and tonic and the store had lemon lime tonic water.

 

He grabbed a 33 ounce bottle of gin and decided if they didn't drink it all, which they wouldn't, he could take it home and keep it for the next time she came over to go over a file.

 

When he returned he decided he should have a quick shower too. A day of travel had the knack of making Mulder a little ripe and if she had the decency to bathe before sharing a bed, so should he.

 

Scully was just exiting the bathroom in a tank top and flannel pants, when Mulder returned the second time with a full ice bucket.

 

"Do I have time for a shower?" He asked as she fixed them both a drink.

 

"Sure," she replied and handed him a tumbler. "Cheers."

 

"Thanks," he took a sip and coughed a little. "Jeez Scully."

 

"Hurry up," she said, ignoring him.

 

Mulder pulled his tie off and tossed it on the bed next to his suitcase and started unbuttoning his shirt. Scully took a lingering look over his bare chest before she disappeared back into the bathroom to collect her things.

 

_This was going to be a long night._


	2. Chapter 2

Mulder toweled off the water from his chest and ran the now damp cloth over his head, making his hair spike up in all directions. The food would be showing up soon and he couldn't hide in the bathroom all night. He needed to eat and hiding from an awkward situation was more Scully's MO.

  
Collecting his dirty laundry from the floor, he opened the door to find his petite partner sitting on 'her side' of the bed, reading The Razor's Edge. Usually on their long trips she had a copy of JAMA and he was impressed she was reading for pleasure instead of for work.

 

"No food?" Mulder asked obviously, looking around and Scully shook her head. Mulder tossed his towel over a chair and rooted around in his bag for a t-shirt. "Probably pretty busy with all the passengers."

 

Scully had spent the last six years seeing Mulder in various states of undress as he did her. The mere sight of his chest wasn't enough to get her heart fluttering but she wasn't totally immune to him either. She still appreciated his body for what it was, strong and muscular, not as lean as when they first started working together. Whatever time he was putting in at the gym wasn't going unnoticed.

  
Eventually she put her marker in her book and set it down.

  
"Mulder?" Scully said, looking up at him, watching the skin stretch over the muscles on his back.

 

 _*I am more than the basic female hormones that appreciate his form,*_ she thought to herself.

 

"I can't find my damn t-shirt," he said, pulling out his wrinkled laundry from his bag.

 

"Maybe you should fold the clothes," she suggested. She took a long sip of her drink and watched him stare at his suitcase as though she had just told him he could fit a Fiat in there if he turned it the right way.

 

The door knocked and Mulder moved to answer it, sans t-shirt and without much thought. The room attendant set the tray down on the table and looked at Scully on the bed with her drink and Mulder, half dressed in dark grey sweat pants.

  
"All set?" The young man asked.

  
Mulder pulled the lid off the food and took a French fry from the plate. "It's still hot."

  
Scully grabbed Mulder's wallet from his suit pants on the couch, ignoring her purse next to the television. One thing was certain when she had to share a space with Mulder, it made her slightly messier and him slightly tidier. Sometimes she hated that.

  
Mulder had already started digging in to the food at the table and didn't care or notice at the intrusion on his property. She fished five dollars out of his wallet and signed the receipt for the room service.

  
"Thank-you," the waiter said and gave them one last look before leaving.

  
Scully joined Mulder at the round table and took half the sandwich off the plate in front of him. "Club sandwich?"

  
"Turkey bacon cranberry," he replied and took a large bite.

  
Scully approved of his choice and smiled at him before sampling the sandwich herself.

  
They ate their meal, they drank two gin drinks a piece and Mulder never found a shirt to put on. To his delight, she never mentioned it. To his further delight, she didn't put a button up, long sleeved pj top on either and he got to appreciate a bra-less Scully, eating supper and drinking gin with him for an hour.

  
_*We've come a long way,*_ he thought to himself, thinking of the woman he shared a house with in the Arcadia Falls. Flannel nightgowns and fluffy robes aside, he still could see her curves. He wasn't dead.

  
"Want to watch a movie, Scully?" Mulder asked as Scully tossed her napkin onto the tray.

  
"Sure."

  
"You're not too tired?" Mulder asked as he picked up the tray to move it outside their door. Her propensity to fall asleep everywhere usually included moving vehicles but sometimes extended to when they watched a movie together or just mid-conversation. Mulder tried not to take those instances too personally.

  
"I think I'll be fine," she said, picking up the TV remote to find something they could agree on. "I'm probably overtired now."

  
Twenty minutes later they had settled on The Wedding Singer over Enemy of the State. Scully pointed out the latter was too close to home and would probably end up in them having a debate over the NSA's recent policies. Mulder would have rather listened to Scully laugh, anyway.

  
The gin was making them careless and by the end of the movie they were wrapped around one another, under the covers and fast asleep. Mulder woke long enough at two am to turn the television off and wrapped himself back around Scully, who snaked her legs through his with a contented sigh.

  
_*Major progress,*_ he thought.

 

***********

 

The sun came shining through the windows of the hotel and Scully opened one eye. The third gin drink last night was probably not a good idea. Neither was the fourth.

  
For the moment, she was unhappy with the buzzing in her head but she decided two aspirin and a lot of water and she would be feeling better in a couple hours. While it had been some time since she had woken up feeling this way, her usual response to a night of drinking and a morning with a fuzzy head had been a long run but they probably didn't have time for her to hit the hotel gym.

  
_*What time was it?*_ she thought. The clock was behind her and she wasn't prepared to move.

 

She was laying on her right hand-side, her face resting on his bare chest and her hand flat on his stomach. He had his right hand on top of hers, with his strong arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her pressed to him.

  
Of the two of them, she was the one in violation from creeping over to his side of the bed but to be fair to her, he was sleeping closer to the middle than his 'side'.

  
In the last six years of them sharing a bed, which had been a few, they were not generally cuddlers. At least, that's what they told themselves. They had spooned for warmth in the colder climates once or twice.

  
After Donnie Pfaster took her the first time, he stayed with her. Mulder laid close to Scully in her bed, ready to chase the nightmares away while she held onto him for mere survival. It was still early on in their partnership but he drove her home from the airport, carried her bag in and she looked up at him with wet, blue eyes and he said he could stay.

  
Her clothes had been taken for forensics so she was wearing her jeans and a t-shirt, and her hair had been pulled away from her face so she could have the cut on her forehead stitched up. She looked like a college co-ed with freckles and a bad boyfriend.

  
In that moment, she looked around her apartment and nodded slightly so he ran down to the car to get his bag and he stayed. It was as much for him as it was for her. Seeing her laying under Pfaster in his mother's foyer with her gun in his hand and her wrists bound was not a sight he was prepared for. Mulder slept in her bed for exactly three nights. She woke up before him on the third morning with a cup of coffee and told him they would be late for work.

  
The strong set shoulders and professional tone told Mulder she quickly swept their recent moment of intimacy under the rug. The tone in which she thanked him for staying as though he had slept on the couch and he said no problem. She returned to work with faint bruising on her wrists, back and shoulders under her sharp suits. You could barely see the cut on her lip anymore.

  
Recently in Kroner, after the flying cow incident, they managed to stay on their respective sides of the bed for the most part. By morning, some spooning happened and Scully had to move Mulder's arm from around her waist to get out of the bed to pee. Scully had been so annoyed with him for most of the trip that it helped offset any romantic feelings bubbling under the surface until after Holman and Sheila kissed. Then she felt annoyed at him for other reasons.

  
Mulder hesitated to profile her then but recognized the reoccurring pattern. She was out of danger, he was out of danger, the physical contact stopped. Yet, neither of them mentioned these bed sharing moments, _ever_.

  
There was no danger this morning in St Louis, nor was there any pressing physical trauma that caused them to cuddle under the blankets as Adam Sandler wooed Drew Barrymore. Scully rationalized it in her mind that she was overtired, a little tipsy and watching a movie with her best friend.

  
So why hadn't she moved yet? She was still enjoying the comfort of Mulder's embrace and pillow top mattress. Scully closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of Mulder's soft skin against her face while she slid her leg up his to find a more comfortable position. This was pretty comfortable but it would have to end soon. Not now, but soon. 

 

"Good morning," Mulder said with a smile and she tilted her head to look up at him. As she started to move off of him he pulled her closer. "No, no, don't move on my account."

 

As tempting as it was to allow herself these moments of intimacy with him, she needed to put the mask of professionalism back on. Perhaps last year she might have been more open to this, after her cancer and before Diana. But they were still rebuilding some bridges and tearing down certain walls. There was still some hurt there.

  
"Mulder," she warned but made no attempt at moving again. She kept her head on his chest and he squeezed her hand reassuringly. She was expecting a fart joke or something about her drooling any moment. Mulder was too busy appreciating the feeling of her body next to his and thanking whatever deity that his body was not behaving like a fourteen year old boy. Which is when he wondered if she would be insulted if he did get an erection or insulted if he didn't.

  
Mulder glanced at the clock and noticed they were going to be rushing soon if they didn't leave the bed. Not that he cared at this point about getting home when all that was waiting was Kersh to tear apart his report after submitting it to Skinner.

  
"We should get up now," Scully said lightly.

  
"Yeah..."

  
He let go of her so she could sit up in the bed. He rubbed a hand along her back before sitting up and stretching. He slowly padded to the bathroom to brush his teeth and pee.

  
They had an hour before they needed to be at the gate, not a lot of time but more than he gave her when he came to her apartment late at night with a file and told her to get ready to go.

  
"Can I use the shower first?" She asked as he sat back down on the bed. "I just need to wash my hair."

  
"Sure," he replied. "I'll go get some coffee."

  
Scully looked up from her suitcase with her panties and a T-shirt in hand, and pointed to his bare chest. "Like that?"

 

Mulder crossed the room and came to stand close in front of her so she was forced to look up at him. He pulled on his suit shirt on, buttoned two of the middle buttons and smiled. "All set."

  
Even with his hair spiked up in all directions and his strange choice in attire couldn't completely break the tension in the room.

  
"Water too, please," she asked.

  
Mulder buttoned one more near the top and pulled on his sneakers.

  
When he returned with their bounty the water was still running and he had time to eat one of the muffins he grabbed from the continental breakfast bar off the lobby. He was about to eat the muffin he grabbed for her when the door opened and she appeared in front of him wearing her dress pants, a fitted t-shirt and bare feet.

  
"All yours," she offered.

  
Her hair was wet and brushed back from her face and it reminded him of decontamination showers, harsh brushes scrubbed on their skin and full body inspections done in front of one another before they were given ill-fitting white hospital scrubs. Surprisingly, he enjoyed that experience but kept the jokes of their first 'shower together' to himself. That probably would have gotten him a slug in the jaw or at the very least a scathing look.

  
But the fact of the matter is, under that hot stream of water, he knew that curiosity got the better of them. They both looked. He looked, she looked. Being exposed in front of one another reminded them both of their physical forms, being of two different sexes and the natural state of their bodies. Mulder thanked a deity then that his body didn't *fully* react to seeing her naked, then too.

  
He could smell the mint from her toothpaste on her breath and the light raspberry scent of her perfume.

  
The draw to her and the want to kiss her was overwhelming and he ran his hands up the smooth skin on her arms. There were moments when he thought she might be open to a kiss but then he second guessed those moments as times when she was just letting her guard down around him.

  
There was a serious problem with these moments and the confined space of the hotel room. It would not be kissing Scully. It would be making himself stop kissing Scully. The outside world still beckoned.

  
They had a flight to catch. They had to work together. They just got the X-Files back. There were a hundred different excellent reasons to not kiss her.

  
If Mulder waited too long he might lose Scully to someone like Ben Fuller from Violent Crimes. He had thick blonde hair and a 'California' tan that Mulder felt was suspect for Washington winters. Fuller spotted Scully when they were in the bull pen working under Kersh and made frequent trips up to their floor with requests for background checks from a specific agent. His blatant hanging around would be annoying if it hadn't been slightly pathetic. He had the hots for Scully since he transferred in from Iowa, with his bleached smile and promise of a normal, safe, happy life with 2.5 kids and a chocolate Labrador. She wanted those things, didn't she?

  
Mulder leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, chaste and soft. But unlike the kiss at New Years, it quickly grew from more than a kiss between friends to a kiss between potential lovers. Her mouth opened slowly to his and his tongue slipped inside to taste the mint on her breath. Her tongue was soft against his and her fingers dug into the material of his shirt against his chest.

  
A strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her closer to him. He thread his fingers through her wet hair and she moaned as the kiss intensified.

  
_*What were they doing? We can't do this! This is wrong!*_ her mind screamed. Her body told her to shut up and enjoy the feeling of a man's desire for her against her belly. _*For fuck's sakes, Dana just enjoy it!*_

  
He didn't want their first kiss to be in a crappy room while on a case but instead it was inside a weird smelling hospital lobby with his arm in a sling. Since that moment he had been trying to work up the nerve to do it again. Scully deserved dinner out, an evening at an art gallery and a walk along the Washington Monument or at least when he wasn't wearing his sweatpants and a dirty shirt from the day before. Yet if not now, when?

  
They allowed their lips to play against one another's, the only sound in the room was heavy breathing. His neck was screaming from bending over and he did the only thing that came to mind, he picked her up by her backside and placed her on the dresser next to them without breaking the kiss. He pressed himself against her, the evidence of his want was hot against her and she moaned. He didn't want to stop kissing her. If he did anything else right in his life, it would be to make sure he could keep kissing her.

  
Mulder decided he wanted to know what her skin tasted like and he kissed his way along her jaw and down the tendons of her neck.

  
"What are we doing?" She breathed.

  
Mulder mumbled into the soft skin at her collarbone. "You're a medical doctor..."

  
Scully pinched the skin on his side and he nipped her playfully.

  
"No, stop," she breathed and he pulled back, his face a mixture of worry and hurt. "No, it's not that."

  
Mulder kissed her lips again and they were caught up again in the new feeling of this physical and romantic act.

  
She pushed on his chest after a few moments and Mulder tore his lips away from hers.

  
She was flushed and panting. "Mulder, we have a plane to catch."

  
Mulder groaned. "Okay."

  
She climbed off the dresser and smoothed out her shirt in some way to help calm herself.

  
Mulder looked past the alabaster complexion of her make-up free face, reluctantly beyond where he could see down her shirt. Her nipples were erect, straining against the white bra under her shirt and he tried to avert his eyes down at her toes. "When did you paint your toenails?"

  
Scully looked down at the pink polish on her feet and ran her tongue along her upper lip. "Before we left for the Des Moines."

  
"Is that where we just were?" Mulder said and grabbed a clean pair of boxers and his jeans. "I should send the pilots a thank you note."

  
Scully frowned at his sarcasm. "Why?"

  
"Booking us on an early flight after sticking us here for the night," he replied. "I don't mind bunking up, Scully. You know I've been suggesting we share a room for years."

  
Scully wondered if those jokes in the past were more than a friendly sexual banter Mulder used to lighten the mood or if that was his plan all along. She tried not to think about it as she blow dried her hair. She tried to think about flying back to DC, retreating to her apartment and not seeing Mulder for twenty four hours before they were due back at the office.

 

*****

  
Luckily, getting out of their hotel room and checking out wasn't as all as awkward as she anticipated. After wading through the line up to check out, they finally made it to the ticket agent where their tickets to DC would be waiting. They were not the last people from the flight to check in but they were definitely not the first.

  
"What do you mean there's no room?" 'Ted' asked the ticket agent. "I have to be back at work tomorrow or I'm going to lose my job!"

  
"You're not going to lose your job," his wife muttered. "Your dad owns the damn company."

 

'Ted' gave his wife a dramatic eye roll. "Jenny, not now okay?"

  
Scully glanced up at Mulder and they shared a look. This was the same couple from the night before. Things were definitely not better for him after Mulder ran into 'Ted' last night at the liquor store.

  
"What's going on?" Mulder asked.

  
"They're sending some of the lucky few by plane but the rest of us have to take a fucking train, like it's 1957," 'Ted' replied.

  
"Us too?" Mulder asked.

  
The ticket agent looked down at her list. "Name?"

  
"Mulder."

  
"Yes, sir I'm sorry. The train should get you there by tomorrow."

  
Scully's jaw dropped. "There has to be another flight we can get on."

  
"You are welcome to rent a car at a discounted price with one of our vouchers, the drive is over twelve hours," the ticket agent replied. Scully was guessing they were not the first people she had given this option to. And while her tone and face were apologetic, the sincerity was lacking. "There are no available flights today from St Louis to Washington."

  
Mulder grazed Scully's arm with his palm and she looked up to him.

  
"Train?" He asked and she nodded sadly.

  
"The shuttle to take you to the train station will be here in half an hour. You'll want to wait out front of the departures entrance," the ticket agent replied. "I have your itinerary."

  
"Is this really cheaper to send us on a train versus have a new flight?" 'Ted' asked angrily. Apparently he was less likely to accept his fate.

  
Mulder put his hand on Scully's lower back to escort her away from the booth.

 

"At least I still have that bottle of gin," Mulder offered as they waited by the doors.

  
"Mulder it's 8 am," Scully rebuked him but her smile told him she was amused.

  
"So we'll wait until lunch service to do some shots?" He asked. "I need another coffee. You?"

  
"And water," she replied.

  
Mulder nodded, knowing if he got a coffee they both liked she would probably share with him so he opted for a drip coffee with one sugar and heavy cream. Less sweet but more creamy. He could compromise.

  
'Ted' joined him at the coffee station and whistled. "My wife is going to kill me."

  
"Sit back and enjoy seeing more of our beautiful nation," Mulder replied and slapped 'Ted' on the shoulder. He was growing tired of being this man's nameless friend. "At least we aren't driving."

  
Mulder found Scully talking with Jenny, 'Ted's' wife.

  
"That's when we moved to DC," Jenny replied.

  
Mulder suddenly worried they would want to sit with them during the trip and wondered if Scully would appreciate him being off putting to give them the space.

  
"So what do you two do?" Jenny asked.

 

Mulder took a sip from his coffee and waited for Scully to tell Jenny and 'Ted' either the truth or a fabrication of something close to the truth. Usually Mulder's 'I'm a key player in the ongoing cover up by a global conspiracy' rant made people stay far, far away and usually ask to see their badges. Scully reserved those speeches for rude and annoying travelers. He wondered if she would tell him to go for it after spending any time with 'Ted.'

  
"I'm a doctor, and Rob is a freelance writer," Scully said with a smile.

  
Mulder smiled down at Scully and put an arm loosely around her shoulders.

  
"Really?" Jenny said with a smile.

  
"Really," Scully replied. She took Mulder's coffee and took a hesitant sip before taking a longer one.

  
The shuttle approached the airport the group of thirty people were forced to travel together in slower mode of transportation. Mulder gently pushed Scully to one of the seats near the front of the bus, hoping Ted' and Jenny were back of the bus people.

  
"Rob and Laura?" Mulder whispered and Scully smiled. "Petrie?"

  
"Not Petrie, Mulder," she replied and looked out the window.

  
"Rob and Laura... Who? Mulder?" He asked. He was delighted they were actually using his last name. Not because it meant anything more than Scully was trying to be consistent. "Really?"

 

"His name is actually Ted, by the way," Scully said, ignoring his question and looking back at him. Her eyes quickly glanced down at his mouth and a pink tongue snaked its way across her upper lip. "Jenny calls him Teddy."

  
Mulder laughed. "You don't say."

  
"You're pretty good," she said and turned to look out the window again.

  
Mulder relaxed against the back of the tall seat and said, his voice ladled with double meaning, "I really am."


	3. Chapter 3

Mulder found their bedroom on the upper level of the train car and opened the small sliding door. When the ticket agent told them the size of the roomette Mulder put his bureau credit card down and asked for an upgrade to a proper bedroom. He could deal with Kersh about the expense another time.

 

There were two chairs that converted to one double bed and another pop down bunk for a second bed. A small space for luggage and a bathroom with a toilet, sink and convertible shower head. Not the same amount of privacy as the hotel room but better than the smaller bunk they were initially offered. The rules for FBI agents of the opposite sex were stated somewhat clearly that it just wasn't to happen unless it had to. Last night and tonight were a 'had-to' situations he could argue for. Actual cuddling with Dana Scully was the added bonus.

 

"Cozy." Mulder said and placed his bag on the couch.  


What was once going to be a free ride out of inconvenience was now costing them $128 and tax. This would be the smallest yet the most expensive room they had ever charged back to the federal government.

 

"Do you want the top or the bottom?" Scully asked as she shed her blazer and hung it in the closet.

 

"Uh...."

 

"Bunk, Mulder, the bunks," she stated firmly but her cheeks betrayed her tone with a flush.

 

Mulder handed her one of the room keys and she tucked it in her pocket. "The bed is big enough for two."

 

Scully's eyes went wide and she tucked her chin back as she thought of what they had been doing an hour and a half ago in their hotel room. "Mulder..."

 

"I don't mean for..." Mulder ran a hand down his face and sat down on the couch. "I just meant you know... Cuddling is nice."

 

"Cuddling?" she repeated. The car began to move and Scully stepped to keep herself from falling.

 

Mulder tugged on her hand and she sat down next to him. "Yeah, PG or PG-13 cuddling."

 

Scully smiled slightly. "Do you know the meaning of a PG-13 rating anymore?"

 

Mulder took her had in his and interlaced their fingers. His large hand engulfed hers. The newness of romantic and physical touch fired through her body. She willed her body to calm down but it wasn't listening like it had before.

 

"Parental guidance suggested, some material may not be suitable for children," he replied and turned her palm over in his hand to lightly trace the lines along her skin. "I'm not suggesting nudity or anything."

 

Scully took in a deep breath and nodded. "Too bad."

 

Mulder's face was a mix of shock and excitement as he watched her head into the small bathroom. "We can up the rating to R anytime you like!"

 

*************

 

They sat in the dining car with a shared paper between them, the car rocking gently back and forth with coffee and a fresh fruit between them on the table. Mulder bought a glazed doughnut for them to share but she ignored it too long and he ate the whole thing except for one bite.

  
  
"Do you want the last strawberry Scully?" Mulder offered and Scully speared it with her fork without answering.

 

They were slowly working their way through a copy of the Washington Herald with the pages they've read piled on one end of the table. Mulder circled stories and leads he liked, writing notes in red ink the margins and Scully would write back underneath in black in with any thoughts of her own.

 

'No basis in science, according to the JAMA article in June 1997, found to be impossible,' she would write back. Mulder drew a heart around that one.

 

It wasn't always a counter argument but it was a different point to his. The back and forth stayed with them, no matter what the subject and Mulder wondered if things progressed further between them how they could maintain that without things being taken personally. If they could remain partners at the FBI while romantically exploring what they had.

 

If Mulder was going to be honest about it, there was no matter of IF anymore but WHEN. He gave up any idea there could be other women for him when she walked through his basement office door in her slightly baggy suits and scientific theories. He just didn't realize it at the time.

 

He had to think to himself that when they were together, they had to ensure their partnership could navigate through the muddy waters that sex often brought out. Sex complicated everything - any working relationship he had with a woman since he left home was exponentially more difficult and emotionally complicated when sex entered the picture.

 

Even with Diana, the progression from work colleagues, to partners to lovers was natural but the shit they brought home with him left a sour taste in both their mouths. So much so that when she announced over pizza and a movie she would be leaving for Europe in two weeks. He couldn't watch Lethal Weapon 3 without remembering that conversation. Her forced use of his given name, the lack of apology in her apology and her excitement to get out of the basement office and see the world.

 

He looked up from his paper to regard the beautiful Dana Scully. Her hair had been cut a little shorter around the front since they got to the bullpen and it was still growing out now that they were back on the X-Files. She could be bald headed with a furry body, he wouldn't care if it meant more kisses like the one they had in their hotel room.

 

He paused and shook his head. He probably would mind a bit but not as much as if he never had a chance to do it again.

 

Who she was the most important part about her. The fact that she was drop dead gorgeous was just icing on the cake at this point.

 

"Mulder I can feel you staring," she said, not looking up from her paper.

 

"Okay," he replied. He was staring.

 

She was a beautiful woman and after Padgett wrote his novel about her, he thought she might be a little less surprised when men told her that. That her beauty did not take away from her heart and her brain. That she could be both, even under the sharp suits and the pathologists scrubs, she was a beautiful woman with a good heart.

 

She looked up from beneath her long lashes, set her pen down on the table, unclicking it as she did so and sat back against the chair. She crossed her arms in front of her and looked back at him.

 

The moments during their partnership of flesh exposed during awkward, ill or life-saving moments was nothing compared to the decontamination showers at Fort Marlene Every shower fantasy he had of them together did not include harsh scrub brushes against their skin by people in full body suits, making them follow every protocol and disregard modesty by showering in front of one another. The harsh brushes, scrubbing against their naked backs and causing them to hunch in pain was was the least sexy moment they had shared to date.

 

Mulder's list included when she threw up in the car on the way home from chemo-therapy. Before they could drive any further, he hosed off her floor mat at the closest gas station and wiped down her shoes before dropping her off at home. She lay in the back seat while he cleaned up her vomit without complaint and when he got her home he put her into bed, he kissed her forehead and told her it was adequate pay back. Of course she knew he was referring to when he got a stomach virus and brought him chicken soup to find him exiting a sour smelling bathroom. He tried to hide the smell by closing the bathroom door and not letting her linger in his apartment too long but she sat him down on his couch, fed him soup and ginger-ale and watched the beginning of Happy Gilmore with him until he fell asleep.

 

If they sat and studied one another, even fully clothed, they knew what was hiding underneath. Yet an aroused body is one more pliant and beautiful. The sight of a man, naked and flaccid, Mulder worried, would remind Scully of a patient at its basic anatomy. He wondered if she knew of all the times on the road he woke up wanting, desiring her. Her medical mind would describe it as the natural and common morning erection, most males experience. Usually they were brought on, in his case, by dreams of her.

 

He knew the colour of her nipples and the small patch of trimmed, red pubic hair at her sex but he didn't know how it would look under his touch. He willed his mind to think of other things. It couldn't have been more than a couple hours into their trip. It would be progressively longer if he kept his thoughts on to potential for sex between them.

 

"How many more hours on this thing?" he asked as he looked her over.

 

"Well, our train left at 9:45 am, it's only 11:45 so we have approximately 26 hours left on here," she replied and ate a slice of melon. "Are you bored already?"

 

Mulder stretched his arms above his head before folding his hands behind his head and looking around the car. There was a family three tables away, young parents and two young children slowly working their way through their breakfast with half of the young boy's food on the floor. Also inhabiting the train car was a large youth group from St Louis United and many people on the train alone.

 

Mulder wondered for what possible reason would anyone choose a train over flying. The convenience, the cost effectiveness and the time efficiency. He couldn't remember if he had even asked if there was an option to fly later that day.

 

"Scully..."

 

Scully set her pen down again and looked up from her paper. "Yes?"

 

"Why, in the love of all that is holy, didn't we ask to take a later flight?"

 

Scully opened her mouth as she was about to say something and then closed it, looking to her left as she tried to recall the conversation at the airport. "We did. They didn't give us the option."

 

"Did you call Kersh?" Mulder asked.

 

"I've been with you the whole time. Maybe you should call Kersh," she said and Mulder made a stared back at her blankly.

 

Mulder smoothed his hands up and down the front of his Heather grey t-shirt and pursed his lips. "Rock, paper, scissors to call Kersh?"

 

"I can," Scully offered but made no effort to move.

 

"I could get the scrabble from the games box over there and the loser has to call Kersh," Mulder suggested with a wry smile. "You want to see how good your ten-dollar words hold up in a game of chance and wit?"

 

"Or I could beat you at Gin Rummy and then you can call Kersh," Scully countered.

 

Her competitive streak and upbringing with two brothers was handy when Mulder wanted to bait her. Once he had her shooting balls of paper into the waste bin, another time she was shooting rubber bands across the room at him. Her fun side was actually a lot of fun but usually kept under wraps, Mulder imagined, just like her sexual side. If the kiss in the hotel room was any indication, the Ice Queen moniker that was floating around the bureau was just a little more than counter-factual.

 

"Why don't I call and leave a message with his assistant?" Mulder offered.

 

Scully opened her paper and snapped it taut in front of her face. "Why don't you?"

 

Apparently teasing her about the assistant was a bad idea.

 

For all the car rides, all the travel time, every long wait in airports and at police stations, they had a usual routine for this kind of long-term car rides. Small, personal stories were exchanged occasionally but usually they people watched and discussed theories on cases, new and old. Mulder told himself he didn't need to know what Scully's favourite flower was to know her but then realized he liked to add that information to the file in his mind labeled 'Scully miscellaneous.'

 

Mulder looked for his jacket and remembered he left it back at the car. "I don't have my phone."

 

Scully set down her paper and dug her phone out of her bag. When she pulled out her phone the display read "No Service" and she told him. "Guess you'll have to call your girlfriend later."

 

"You know I don't like blondes," Mulder replied, picking up the sports section.

 

"Brunettes?" She guessed, knowing it could cause him to flinch and it did.

 

Calmly, he set the paper down in front of him and laced his fingers together, leaning forward on his elbows. "I actually have been partial to petite redheads that carry Sig Sauers, spout of medical jargon and enjoy second guessing me."

 

A pink tongue darted out to wet her upper lip and she let out a deep breath. "Really?"

 

"See? Gets me every time!" He shook his head and she huffed out a laugh.

 

"Be serious Mulder," she retorted and rolled her eyes.

 

He motioned for her to lean forward and she mimicked his pose, elbows on the table, fingers laced and leaning forward.

 

"Yes?"

 

The last time she said yes in that tone to him she brushed off his declaration of love to her.

 

Mulder motioned with his finger for her to lean a little closer and she did. His large hands covered hers and he closed the gap between them as he placed a soft, chaste kiss on her lips. She was taken by surprise but she didn't pull away. Her mind let go of the idea they were in such a public place, that they were working or that he was possibly doing this to prove a point.

 

The kiss lingered and her mouth opened slightly so Mulder took advantage and slipped his tongue past her lips to taste her. She allowed him this dalliance, this public display and kissed him back.

 

When he pulled away he looked into her eyes. "I forgot what my point was but I think I made it."

 

Against her better judgment she leaned forward to kiss him again. Mulder let his lips play against hers and he desperately wished there wasn't a table between them. He wanted to feel her body against his and touch her. She wanted to feel the weight of his body on top of hers. The last time she had a man on top of her he tried to kill her. The sex was what she needed however the talking tattoo and attempted murder could have been left out.

 

"Uh sir," a steward was standing a few feet away from their their table. Mulder slowly turned his head to look up at the man who was smiling at them reluctantly. "We need to clean the cabin for lunch service."

 

"Sure," Mulder cleared his throat. "Any idea when we'll be within cell range again?"

 

"Probably within the next couple of hours. We have phones available in the next car if you need to place a call," the man informed them. "Lunch service is in the next hour if you want to come back."

 

"Rock, Paper, Scissors to call Kersh?" Mulder offered again as they headed out of the train car.

 

"Or why don't you man up and call him?" She countered.

 

"Because he's going to sigh and pause for a really long time when I tell him it's me, before I even say anything else."

 

Scully laughed and shook her head.

 

"Come on, Scully," Mulder begged as they got into the next car. There was a sign that indicated this was the quiet car so he had to wait until they were through the car before continuing his shameless pleading.

 

As they made it to the next train there was a bank of phones inside little cubicles. "What if I rub your feet for an hour once a week if you make this call?"

 

Scully waved her hand in front of her dismissively. "It's fine, I'll call."

 

Mulder pointed to the next booth and he called his apartment to check his messages. One from Frohike to call the Gunmen when he was back on his trip with the 'delicious Doctor Scully' and another from Misty Kittens, the phone sex line he stopped calling after they got back from Antarctica and they had been reassigned under Kersh. It didn't seem right anymore to listen to another woman talk about things she would do to him when it wasn't at all what he wanted. He wanted a woman to want to do those things, just that woman happened to be Scully.

 

He could spend 15 minutes on the phone with her, asking about her theory on the common paranormal experience of misplaced objects, argue for a bit, wish her good night and go to town.

 

At first he felt guilty for using the idea of Scully as the source of his sexual pleasure however the first time it happened it wasn't entirely intentional. And he realized he still respected her for all that she was; she was a damn good agent, the smartest person he knew and the only person he could count on to save him from himself.

 

When it happened so early on in their relationship he blamed it on lack of sleep among other factors. The close quarters they had been in up in the arctic while people around them were being murdered and that weird moment in the storage locker to check each other's necks for parasitic worms. If that wasn't a milestone of partner-bonding, he didn't know what was. They were tired, isolated and working to trust one another. Such a metaphor for their partnership.

 

When he got back, he cleaned himself up and lay down on his couch to sleep for the next ten hours. He put on his newest mail-order R-Rated video expecting to see a tall blonde women enact a personal favourite fantasy of his, suddenly there was a petite redhead. The jacket for the tape said her name was Brandi Alexxxander and she was obviously built more generously than Scully in certain areas but his mind saw the red hair and went there immediately. Luckily this was a Friday night and he wasn't expected to see her until Monday morning. He hadn't yet started coming up with excuses to see her on weekends. Their lives still had some boundaries early on.

 

For the first few years they worked together, he didn't sit down to fantasize about Scully. In fact, he had every other kind of woman on his tapes intentionally to make that happen. When he did fantasize about her, he used an excuse that Scully might come up with, since she was the woman he spent the most time with, it was only natural that he might, from time to time, think about her in that way. Except lately, that way involved all manners of dark deeds that could make Melvin Frohike blush.

 

Scully was standing in front of him at the booth, looking at him expectantly and he was pulled back into present day. They were still on the train and he remembered they would be sharing a room for the next 24 hours. He looked up at her slightly, his face more parallel to his as he sat and she stood at the edge of the booth.

 

"You look unscathed," he noted and she nodded. "Did you get Kersh or his secretary?"

 

"I called Skinner and talked to Kimberly," she said letting out a breath and looked up the train car. She moved towards him slightly as a group of passengers walked through the car and towards a booth. "Kimberly is going to pass along the message to Kersh's assistant for me."

 

"Way to go, Scully," Mulder quipped.

 

The train jostled on the track and Scully stumbled towards him, her hand bracing out next to his head while trying to keep her body from crashing into his. Mulder put his hands out, suddenly grabbing her hips to help or hinder her breasts from smacking him in the face.

 

"Oh!" she breathed out and Mulder tried to pull his head back so his face was not directly in her cleavage.

  
_This must be a punishment or an exercise in self control,_ he thought.

 

Mulder swallowed and looked up at her. The temptation to look straight ahead, down into nirvana was tempting but in moments like this, being a creep was the last thing he could get away with. If he made a sly comment when they were going over a report or standing over an autopsy table she could blush or try not to smile. Grabbing her butt or making a point to look down her cleavage just made him like every other man at the FBI who missed the point of the sexual harassment seminar they attended every year.

 

_Probably punishment._

 

Mulder noticed her breathing had changed and her pupils were slightly dilated. He wondered if she was feeling sick from the train movement but her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip and she was looking at his mouth. She kissed him back at the dinner car but that didn't mean that she was ready to rush into bed with him. Not that he would mind if she did. It might make things a little messy but Mulder was ready for things to be messy between them for the better.

 

He worried if he spoke, if he broke eye contact with her that she might realize what was going on. She would come to her senses and push him away.

 

For whatever her motivation, Mulder couldn't fathom, she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his. He opened his lips and the kiss became heated. First kisses always were at the beginning before sex made them the stepping stone to bigger rewards.

 

Except it wouldn't be the case for them. It wasn't a matter if if anymore but when. And when that did happen, he would never make her feel like he was rushing anything to get to the good stuff. If you have six years of bantering, deep personal loss and their growing trust, when you finally get to kiss them, you do it for all it's worth and appreciate every kiss you get.

 

Mulder kept his hands on her hips, keeping her steady as the train continued to bump down the track. She stepped further into the booth and she reached out behind her to close the door on them.

 

_Holy shit._

 

They maneuvered slightly and she came to stand closer to him, her body now in between his legs while her fingers thread into the short hair on the back of his head.

 

Mulder took the opportunity to move one hand up her back while the other stayed firmly planted on her hip. He wanted to squeeze the perfect meat of the flesh of her ass but his mind was wildly aware of where they were. His body responded to hers so quickly and he remembered that they had a few cars to walk through to get back to the private sanctuary of their room. If Scully had to walk a while feeling excited for Mulder it wouldn't be nearly as uncomfortable as it would be for him.

 

Teeth knocked against one another and the train bumped again, their bodies moving together this time around the car.

 

Mulder broke the kiss and he watched her pant in front of him. "Can we go to our room now?"

 

Scully nodded and wiped at the corners of her mouth. She tried to smooth out her shirt, tucked her hair behind her ears but she still looked flushed. She was sexy as all hell and he told her so.

 

She responded by kissing him again and he pushed her against the wall of the cubicle. The evidence of his desire for her was pushed into her leg and she moaned into his mouth. The sliding door of the cubicle banged against the frame and they pulled apart at the same moment to look at the small gap and beyond that, a young child watching them.

 

"Hello!" She said, opening the door.

 

Mulder moved awkwardly to stand behind Scully and she greeted the young girl. "Hi there."

 

"What were you doing?" the little girl with curly blond hair asked them.

 

Mulder suspected she knew exactly what she was doing but she was at the precocious age of embarrassing adults she found in compromising positions. She probably told strangers if she heard her mother say a bad word.

 

"Um..." Scully started.

 

"Where's your mom and dad?" Mulder asked and tried to adjust himself behind the shield of Scully's body.

 

"My dad is on the phone in the next booth. He closed the door so I can't hear him talking to his new girlfriend," she said and smiled angelically. "What were you doing?"

 

"Kissing," Mulder said simply and Scully looked over her shoulder at him sharply.

 

"My mommy does that with her new friend Alicia," the little girl reported and Mulder smiled brightly at her.

 

"Good for your mommy," Mulder replied and Scully nudged him with her elbow. "Hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

 

"How old are you?" Scully asked.

 

"Six," the little girl replied and Mulder remembered exactly the kinds of things Samantha used to blurt out when they were with family friends. "How old are you?"

 

"Old, like older than thirty," Mulder replied to her and the little girl made a face.

 

"Is he your boyfriend?" the little girl asked Scully, pointing at Mulder.

 

"He's my partner," Scully replied automatically, realizing how unclear that would sound to a child. She didn't know what they were. Partners who kissed? The platonic ship had sailed for them before he tried to kiss her in the hallway at Hegal Place. It just took them almost losing one another before they realized it.

 

He tapped on Scully's elbow. "We should get going."

 

Scully smiled at the little girl as they moved past her and the little girl waved.

 

She wondered, as they made their way back to the room car, if Mulder would mention the word partner to her or if they could side-step that little hiccup of admission. To be fair to Scully, they hadn't discussed anything. He didn't give her a pin or ask her to wear his letterman's jacket. However, she was far from just anything to him and if she didn't know that by now, they were worse off than he thought.


	4. Chapter 4

They had managed to pass the time in next available car, eaten lunch with a bit of flirting and Scully only caught Mulder staring a few times. He said, in his defense, the last time they had spent this much time together without reports to work on and filing was on the trip back to Antarctica and they spent the majority of their travel time sleeping. Apparently that was the right thing to say and he felt her foot rub his leg under the table.

 

He thought once they had kissed, it would get easier but he realized his naivety and that navigating the terrain could be difficult.

 

Mulder closed the door on their room and watched Scully fidget with the zippers on her bag. The steward would be by after dinner service to turn down the rooms so at the moment, it was still just a private car with a few couches. There was no bed to relax on and Mulder could use a nap. If they slept it would at least be a way to take the pressure off whether making out was an acceptable way to pass the time.

 

The walk back through the cars to their room proved to be a helpful exercise in cooling their hormones. Mulder seemed to be out of his depth on this entire trip since he decided to kiss her.

 

He could tell she was nervous, he was feeling nervous too.

 

Mulder cleared his throat. "Uh... So..."

 

"Do you think we could ask the steward to make up the bed? I could use a nap," Scully admitted as she shed her jacket.

 

The woman who claimed she was fine when she wasn't, not sleeping when she was exhausted, and skipped meals when she needed the calories was admitting she was tired.

 

Mulder must have shown his thoughts on his face and Scully tried not to roll her eyes.

 

"It's been a long few days, I feel like I'm still catching up."

 

"I'm happy to have a nap," Mulder replied, touching his fingers to his chest in that way that accentuated his pectoral muscles. "I just can't believe you're admitting to needing rest."

 

"Let's call it progress and you can shut up about it," she replied, crossing her arms and Mulder held up his arms defensively.

 

"Hey, I'm happy for any and all progress," Mulder stated. They both knew what he was talking about and she rewarded him with a small smile. "Do you want me to find a steward? It can't be that complicated to turn down a bed."

 

Oxford educated, Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigations Fox William Mulder was not what Scully would call a handy-man but she gestured to the couches area to let him try.

 

To her surprise, he managed to put the table back up and pull the couches down with some ease. The couch spanning just over six feet, would barely fit Mulder with a couple of inches to spare. If they had taken the other room, while it offered less privacy, no personal bathroom or shower, the bed would have been a little more comfortable for his frame. Since it wasn't possible to switch rooms at this point of their venture, Mulder would be out of luck.

 

Scully looked at the top bunk, still stowed away and decided she could forego protocol and FBI rules for one more day. They hadn't started drinking yet so the chances of her snuggling up to Mulder were slim. Unless he looked at her that way he always did and invited her in. Then maybe she might feel rude to say no.

 

Scully slipped off her shoes and sat down on the bed. The olive green fitted shirt against her pale skin contrasted against her copper hair. He noticed it was less intense than it had been in the past, during her cancer and now what Mulder would describe as more of a light auburn. The hair dye her stylist used to cover any premature greys probably called this something like Apricot or Ginger Spice.

 

"No pillows."

 

Mulder looked around the cabin and spotted the pillows and bed sheets in a storage compartment above the door frame. "All of it?"

 

Scully nodded and took the fitted sheet from him. Mulder took a step back as he watched her struggle to tuck the far top corner into the material and she climbed on her knees to reach better.

 

“Mulder, are you doing your end?” Scully asked, looking over her shoulder. His eyes were glued firmly to her backside and he looked at her face, his own cheeks flushing. “Mulder?”

 

“Uh, sorry,” he said, clearing his throat and moving to fix the bottom edge of the bedding.

 

Scully finished her end and stood up, putting her hands on her hips and trying not to look amused. Mulder finished his side and looked down at the floor.

 

“That’s not the first time you’ve done that, I’m sure,” she said with a hint of amusement.

 

Mulder fought back a smile as he looked at her, seeing the amusement also but wanting to tread lightly. What did three kisses and a shared bed mean anyway? Oggling her was one thing but he usually had the presence of mind not to get caught.

 

“Not the first,” he admitted.

 

Scully nodded once. “We’re not technically on the clock so it’s not a crossed line for partners such as ourselves but if you do that at a crime scene I will file a report with the head of our department.”

 

Mulder frowned. “I’m the head of our department.”

 

Scully smiled, the little bit of her gums showing and Mulder felt relieved. Flirtatious Scully was definitely something he would have to get used to but so far he liked it.

 

“ _Oh_.” Mulder let out a breath and pulled her towards him. They shared a laugh and he sat down on the bed, pulling her between his knees.

 

“But definitely don’t do it when we’re working,” she murmured into his hair.

 

Mulder slid his hands up the back of her legs and to her bottom. “You do have a nice ass, Scully.”

 

“Glad you finally noticed,” she teased back.

 

Mulder gave it a light squeeze. “I noticed about seven years ago when you were standing in my hotel room in a bra and panties and about every day since but usually I’m a little better at hiding when I’m checking you out.”

 

Scully took a step away from him and crossed her arms as she did when she was about to make a counterargument to a crazy theory. “I can name about 10 instances of it happening before now, Mulder.”

 

“ _Just_ ten? I guess I’m better about it than I thought,” he said in the same tone that he used when he was trying to prove that the footage on a scrambled video was that of Bigfoot.

 

“It’s happened more than that?” she asked.

 

“Scully, I’ll tell you this every day if I have to. I respect the hell out of you, you’re a damn fine agent and one of the smartest people I have ever met but _I see you_ ,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

 

Her cheeks flushed immediately and she looked around the room as though she was hoping she could jump out the nearest window.

 

“I know you’re not good with compliments about your appearance,” he started.

 

“That’s not what I was really praised about,” she explained uncomfortably. “It’s never been...”

 

It was true. Melissa was noticed for her long hair, slender frame and clear complexion whereas ‘little Dana’ was praised for straight A’s and good behaviour. The rebellious years were hardest on her and Ahab, who didn’t know how to talk to the fourteen year old Dana who stole her mother’s cigarette’s and sassed him when he told her to clean up her room. They were all grateful when that phase passed.

 

While she could objectively look in the mirror in her 30s and know that she wasn’t unattractive, she didn’t look at herself as a beautiful woman. She saw herself as more than the sum of her parts. She wasn’t treated as that by Mulder for all those years and never felt she was reduced to another woman who got ahead with her looks or sexuality.

 

To be taken seriously, she had to be considered sexless and strict-minded. The boys-club of the FBI would allow nothing less. The irony of men reducing a woman to a sex object and discounting any intelligence a woman may have was almost laughable. Except it wasn’t. The women who “slept around” had fewer dance partners on their card than half the FBI directors yet getting anywhere within the FBI with a reputation was like trying to wade through a kiddie pool full of peanut butter. Scully accepted where she was, in the basement and fighting for the truth. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want the respect of her peers, and she deserved it. If anything, at the very least, the other agents at the bureau could give her that.

 

“I’ll probably tell you from time to time and you’ll have to get used to that,” he said frankly, ensuring her that compliments were going to be a thing they did if they did this. “I’ll probably tell you all the time.”

 

_Maybe if she kissed him he would stop talking._

 

Scully had been told in the past by men she dated but she rarely felt it. She wasn’t new to the concept of a man finding her attractive. She just wasn’t exactly accustomed to hearing it, especially from Mulder. They didn’t start their day at the office complimenting each other’s appearances or kiss hello. That would take some adjusting to.

 

It was hard for her to imagine a life where she was with anyone but Mulder but the romantic elements weren’t exactly cut and dry. In all reality, she felt like her self the most when she was with him yet hearing him say she was beautiful sounded more bizarre than when he described the Jersey Devil to him during their first year working together.

 

She wondered what it said about her that her hesitation for that element of their relationship.

 

“If this isn’t something you want...” Mulder started, somehow sensing what she was thinking. His heart was simultaneously breaking at the thought.

 

“I want it,” Scully said quickly and approached him. “I just... I’m a little bad at it.”

 

“I highly doubt that’s possible,” Mulder smirked and she huffed out a laugh.

 

“The romance part,” she clarified.

 

“So you’ll forgive me if I don’t bring flowers before we go every date and you won’t mind if I occasionally leave the toilet seat up?” he asked, pulling her into an embrace.

 

His face was level with hers as he sat on the bed and she appreciated being able to look him in they eye.

 

"I don’t expect you to be a different person Mulder,” she said. “I would hope you wouldn’t expect me to be either.”

 

“Maybe a little,” Mulder suggested and an auburn eyebrow raised skeptically. “I know this sounds crazy but I want you to tell me how you’re feeling. I don’t like guessing. I can but I don’t like it.”

 

“Did you go to a communication and keys to partnership conference that I don’t know about?” Scully asked and Mulder gave her backside a squeeze. She was quickly learning Mulder’s appreciation for her anatomy and she didn’t mind it. “Okay,  so I’ll talk about my feelings more and you won’t ditch me when we’re doing a case.”

 

“Well that stopped happening a few years ago,” he pointed out and the eyebrow raised again. “It has.”

 

Scully looked into his eyes and could see he meant it. She wondered when the last time it was that he ditched her and she realized instead he was coming to her apartment at all hours of the night, on weekends or twenty minutes after work to take her on a wild goose chase. The truth was, she wouldn’t be anywhere else. Mulder needed her as much as she needed to be there.

 

“You ditched me to go on the Queen Ann!” Scully said suddenly. “Just not for the same reasons you used to.”

 

Mulder remembered going over to the Lone Gunmen’s lair that weekend, finding the information, calling Scully who wasn’t at home and deciding to take off. It was still a bad time for them, admissions of “I love you” or not. What he didn’t know, what he didn’t learn until later, was that she had been fighting the entire FBI to obtain the information she needed to find him.

 

The following side-trip to Nevada she complained about living her life inside a Ford Taurus and missing out on every opportunity for a normal life. He would give up everything if he could to provide that for her but he still hadn’t found his sister. If it meant bringing those men to justice, maybe then it could stop. Or at the very least, he could look for answers to the paranormal without worrying there was a government conspiracies to hide aliens. It all sounded ridiculous when he put it that way.

 

He certainly had his priorities straight.

 

“I called you and you weren’t home,” he remembered that she had gone to a birthday party for her godson who she hadn’t seen in 2 years. It was nice to see Ellen but when she asked what Dana was doing these days at the FBI, she narrowed her eyes and paused for longer than she realized. “Have I ditched you since we got the X-Files back?”

 

Scully shook her head.

 

“Is there anything else?” he asked.

 

Were they really negotiating terms of their romantic relationship?

 

“I don’t know.... I guess I don’t want the work to change,” she said, looking around the room as though the clue to getting out of this conversation was laying hidden beneath a suitcase or jacket.

 

Step aside from the fact that this was a healthier conversation for them, this was also very out of character. He never asked her what she wanted expecting to get an answer unless it was on the topic of food, drink or where to sit. Everything else they felt like they knew about one another. This was brand new territory. And Mulder, openly asking Scully to share herself in more of an emotionally healthy capacity almost seemed as though this was an alternate universe of their truth.

 

“Scully?” Mulder asked again.

 

“I want to do the work. I like this,” she said gesturing between them. “But I know there’s still answers we both need. But I won’t be your yes-man on a case just because of this.”

 

“I wouldn’t anticipate any kind of personality change. And I can multitask,” Mulder suggested as he moved one hand from her backside to her back, massaging her there while the other hand gave a squeeze. “See?”

 

Scully rolled her eyes a bit and stepped away from him. “I’m not trying to make this complicated.”

 

Mulder nodded. “I think no matter what happens between us it always would be complicated, Scully.”

 

“Is that a reason we shouldn’t do this?” she asked.

 

“Are we back to that?” he asked, standing up.

 

“No... I just... I said I’m not good at this,” she said and her face reddening.

 

“I love you,” he said frankly and her face showed a sudden panic. “You don’t have to say it back, Scully. I know you love me too. I don’t need you to tell me. Everything you’ve done for me is enough to know how you feel. I’ve spent the last seven years with you by my side and I couldn’t think of someone who I would rather have with me. I know, you wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t some part of you that liked me just a little. I want to do this. I think you do too.”

 

There was a beat and Mulder wondered if he should keep talking. Scully took his hand and turned it over so she could rub her thumb across his large palm while she tugged him closer. He closed the gap between them and she wrapped her arms around him again.

 

If there was anything she knew, it was being with him in this way didn’t make things worse. Holding each other, in all the times they’ve done it over the last seven years, only aided in the expression.

 

How could two brilliant minds be so bad at telling one another how they feel?

 

“Mulder-” she started, her breath hot on his arm. “I do care about you a lot.”

 

“I know, Scully,” he said into her hair. “You don’t have to say anything.”

 

“You said that,” she said. “But I... I’ve relied on you for so much. After my abduction. Throughout my illness. Finding Emily. And that’s not just things I can say a partner would do.”

 

“Someone tell me a division of the FBI that has the same case load, risks and baggage and I’ll do a tap dance on Kersh’s desk,” he said and he felt her body vibrate with laughter against his. “But you know I didn’t do those things out of a displaced guilt over what you’ve been put through.”

 

“I have slowly come to realize that,” she said and looked up at him.

 

“Thank god,” he snorted and moved his hands up to her hair, holding her head the way he did as though she was something delicate or fragile. He never treated her as such, and if there was one thing she always felt from him, it was that he looked at her as his equal. Mulder peppered her faced with kisses.

 

For all that she couldn’t say to him, she felt it. It took her a long time to realize it was more than friendship, more than care and compassion. The feeling of love in her heart for him, the desire to be with him completely.

 

Scully realized she didn’t want to wait anymore. She didn’t want to stall her life from moving forward. Of all the things that scared her in the past with past relationships, with Jack or Daniel, she didn’t have those fears with Mulder. Neither of those men made her feel complete in this way and he had yet to truly touch her.

 

She needed to rectify that. She wanted to feel his hands on her - if not to be completely with him but to cross some barriers from their professional to personal relationship. Flirting was one thing, and they had been doing a lot of that lately, but she could show what she felt for him.

 

They walked back towards the bed and he sat down on it, pulling her toward him. She climbed onto his lap and his eyes widened.

 

“Hell-o,” he greeted as she settled herself on top of him.

 

“Hello,” she replied, cheeky as though this was totally normal.

 

Scully kissed him firmly on the mouth and his lips parted to let her in. She was in control, holding his head and driving this forward as her hips pressed into his. He would be okay with that if if meant more of this. Mulder scooped her up and moved them further back towards the middle of the bed while kicking his shoes off. Scully took her mouth away from his to shed her heels and they landed with a thunk on the linoleum floor of their room.

 

“Are we not napping anymore?” he murmured into her mouth.

 

“I think a little bit of this before a nap is okay?” she suggested, her hips pressing into his. The evidence of his excitement for her was confined between them under his jeans. What he didn’t know was her want for him. At least more of what they had been doing.

 

Mulder, ever the gentleman, nodded. “I can do more of this.”

 

“I don’t want...” she started as she nipped at the stubble along his chin.

 

“We don’t have to,” he agreed.

 

As much as he wanted to be with Scully, sex on a train was not his ideal either. He could tolerate waiting until they got to Washington to consummate their relationship in a bed, preferably hers, with sheets that smelled like her shampoo and the body lotion she used at night.

 

Mulder knew he had it bad when he went out and bought a new bed, 500 thread count sheets and a special detergent with a scent he thought she might like. He realized it might have been a waste of money when she brushed him off at his Christmas invitation but rose again when she let him kiss him at New Years.

 

A few light kisses on the lips turned to more heated, deeper ones. Hands moved over backs, skin hidden underneath casual clothing while their pelvic muscles moved in a rhythm to a slow grind. If he had any memory to top this one for dry humping a beautiful woman, this one had become the new champion. Her lips were plump and supple against his, her mouth tasted like everything he thought it would and her taught body on top of his, moving and gyrating was driving him crazy.

 

It was the simple act of feeling her tongue against his that was driving him to the edge and he realized he needed to slow down if he didn’t want to mess his only pair of jeans.

 

“I gotta slow down, Scully,” he grunted as she ran a tongue along his hot ear. “Ugh, don’t do that.”

 

She pulled back and looked at him. “I thought your ears were sensitive?”

 

“Oh that’s what I mean.” he said, running his hands up her back. “Too good. I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

 

He slowly kissed his way along her collarbone and found her breath hitch under his teeth as they teased at her skin.

 

“Don’t do that,” she admonished him. “I mean, if we’re trying not to embarrass ourselves.”

 

Mulder ran his pursed lips along the sensitive area and stilled his hands on her hips. “I’m not worried about you getting embarrassed. I’m worried about me ruining my last pair of clean pants.”

 

“Thank you for that,” Scully said dryly.

 

“Why do I need to remind you, the medical doctor, of what can happen?” Mulder teased as he took her in his hands and flipped her onto her back so she was underneath him. “Where’s your license by the way, I think I need to make sure it’s real.”

 

Mulder sat back on his haunches over her while he pretended to do a search of her by running his hands up her slender legs to her thighs then to the plains of her flat stomach before stopping just underneath her breasts.

 

“I can guarantee you, I don’t have it in my bra,” she said and his face fell for a moment. “But you’re welcome to check.”

 

Mulder’s face lit up with delight and he closed his palms over her breasts. “As perfect as these are, I don’t think there’s a medical degree in there either.”

 

He climbed himself more on top of her and kissed her again, forgetting his earlier need to slow things down. She wrapped one leg around his waist and pulled his body closer to hers, his cock nestled between their bodies and rubbing her in the right places.

 

A sound escaped her that was a cross between a grunt and a sigh. Mulder found it adorable. He began to trace his way down her neck to the sensitive nerves he was trying to claim as his own. His lips soothed and his tongue licked before teeth nipped and marked, breaking capillaries, bursting superficial blood vessels under the skin and scoring the ivory skin down to her collarbones.

 

She would have to use her Estee Lauder Double Wear foundation to cover his bite marks later but if she minded, she wasn’t saying so now.

 

His hand worked her breast, and she arched her back, aching for more contact. He could feel her nipple perked underneath the fabric of her bra and through her shirt, he nudged the material down to pinch at the nub. Mulder lifted her head to see her jaw dropped slightly and her eyes closed. She had one hand clutching the bedsheet and the other threaded through Mulder’s hair. When he looked up at her, he felt as though he was seeing a mystery that few had witnessed. He wanted to be the last.

 

“More,” she breathed, opening her eyes to look at him and he nodded in agreement. He needed more of this too.

 

One hand slipped under her shirt and found her bra, a front clasp of all heavenly things and opened it beneath the material before closing his palm over the hot flesh on her chest. Was he allowed to spend the next 22 hours doing just this? Was that a problem for anyone?

 

He slowly inched her shirt up and started to see something flash across her eyes. Hesitation? Shyness?

 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, searching her face.

 

“Uh, no....” Scully said, not all together convincingly. “I just...”

 

A few seconds ago she was saying more, now she was hesitant. Whatever she was feeling she wasn’t sharing.

 

“Scully?”

 

In a moment of bravado, she sat up and took her shirt off over her head and shed her bra, sitting in front of him in her pants. There was the urge to cover herself. Mulder took her hands in his and pulled her arms down. She looked up to him expecting to be looking at her but he was looking at her face. She saw in his eyes gentleness and kindness, there was patience and understanding. She realized it was just them, no one else. The expectations they had of one another would match up to whatever reality gave them.

 

Mulder pulled his heather grey t-shirt over his head and pointed to the puckered skin on his shoulder. “I have one too.”

 

Scully looked down at her abdomen where matching scar was and then placed a kiss on his. “I’m sorry.”

 

“I never thought getting shot would save my life,” Mulder quipped. “But you were right.”

 

“Say it again,” she teased.

 

“You were right, Scully,” he repeated with a smile and she kissed him on the mouth.

 

He covered her body with his, his skin was hot against hers and she felt safe, blanketed by him. Their mouths played at one another again and Mulder moved his body slowly down hers. He kissed her everywhere while his hand worked on on her trousers. A clasp unhitched and a zipper slid slowly down before his hand snuck under the waistband.

 

He encountered lace trim panties and her hips raised instinctively to meet him. Long fingers played at the edging before slipping underneath and encountering a trimmed thatch of hair and moisture.

 

The fact that she was wet for him, for what he was doing for her drove him crazy. He wanted her to be feral for him, to crave him as he had her all these years.

 

A soft sigh escaped her lips and they stared into one another’s eyes as he slipped a finger past her folds to feel her sex. Another one of his long digits moved between her lips and her legs opened more on the bed to accommodate him. Mulder wanted to watch her face as ecstasy and pleasure played across her features but he wanted to see what he was doing to her. He liked to watch, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

 

“Can I take these off?” he asked looking down at her pants and she nodded.

 

Regretfully he pulled his hand from her and he slowly tugged the black trousers down and off her legs. Next were the thigh high stockings she opted for over full pantyhose. He handled them with care, discarding the nude sheath on top of the her other items of apparel. He kissed his way up her body until his face was level with her crotch and he breathed in the scent of her. She smelled like everything he hoped she would. Sex and pheromones, the stuff that laid beneath those business suits all these years. What he could have only imagined in his fantasies was now in front of him. Why was he just staring at it?

 

“Mulder?” she asked, obviously wondering why he had stopped.

 

“You really are a beautiful woman,” he said as his hands began to tug on her underwear. The auburn curls were almost a spot on match to the tresses on her head but not quite exact.

 

Her cheeks flushed but she held his gaze as he helped her shed the last of her clothing.

 

As much as he wanted her, and he wanted her more than he wanted his next bag of sunflower seeds, he was hoping their first time wouldn’t be on a rocking train car in the middle of case but he didn’t know if he had the self control to stop himself if she wanted this too.

 

Before she could question him any further, he slipped his fingers back between her legs and slipped his middle digit inside her. She felt hot and tight just to his finger and a hiss escaped her lips.

 

“Oh God,” she moaned and Mulder withdrew the digit before inserting it again. “Oh God.”

 

He was torn between wanting to kiss her while his finger made small circles around her clitoris, but he was enjoying watching her reaction to him. It was agony and euphoria at the same time. It was rapture and torment. How did he manage to not do this every day since he met her?

 

His finger dipped inside her sex again before retreating to circle around her bundle of nerves at her centre. He repeated this three, four, five more times before a frantic hand reached out and found his cock, hard under his jeans.

 

“ _Oh_.” It was his turn to be surprised.

 

Mulder tried to keep his movements steady however his distraction now lay with two hands working on the button and fly on his jeans. She did her best to push them down, along with his boxer shorts but it was hard from where she was lying. He moved away quickly to pull his jeans and boxers down. A large hand moved across her abdomen and he kissed her mouth before maneuvering his upper body so that his face was in line with her pelvis.

 

He looked up to her eyes for a moment and she gave a slight nod, signaling it was okay. He kissed along her belly and she gasped at the sensation. He nipped at each hip bone, marking them there too before his mouth covered her sex. He licked along her folds before his tongue circled her clit, mimicking his hands earlier motions. He lapped at her like ice cream, he ground his teeth against her clitoris before pushing two fingers slowly inside of her.

 

“Oh god!” she cried out again and fingers clutched at his hair.

 

Her hips started to move in counteraction to his mouth as she quite literally fucked his face. The sound of her sex, the wetness on his fingers and her soft moans filled the train car.

 

“Oh God, Mulder, I’m going to come,” she cried softly and Mulder wish he could time stamp this moment. “Muuuulll..”

 

Her voice drifted off and she shrieked. Her walls swelled, and he could feel them gripping his fingers. Fluid rushed from her sex and he tried to ride out the rest of her orgasm with her, the inner explosion of frenzy and euphoria taking over her body.

 

Mulder placed a kiss on her inner thigh and she placed a hand over herself, covering her entrance. Mulder slowly pulled his hand from her and she sighed.

 

“Holy shit,” she panted.

 

Mulder sat up on his haunches and watched her as she brushed away her hair from her forehead and look wildly around the train car before looking at him.

 

“Wow.”

 

“Good?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” she agreed. “I can’t think of a better word than good.”

 

“Amazing?” he prompted.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Best you ever had?” he teased.

 

“Whatever you say Mulder,” she breathed.

 

“Is that all I had to do was to get you to agree with me?” he asked and his hand drifted to where her eyes were staring. His cock twitched in his hand under her gaze. “Scully?”

 

She sat up and nodded. “Whatever you say, Mulder.”

  
She crawled towards him on the bed and pushed him gently so he was sitting against the wall of the bed. Her tongue darted out and she looked down at him as he moved his hand slowly up and down his member.

 

“I never thought... I would enjoy watching you do that,” she said, staring at his hand.

 

“Do you like to watch, Miss Scully?” he inquired with a leer.

 

She replaced his hand with hers and his eyes closed, his head falling back against the padded wall of their enclosure. “I like this too.”

 

“Yeah that’s good,” he agreed.

 

She kissed along his jaw before moving her mouth towards his cock.

 

“Scully...” he whispered. “You don’t...”

 

The action of her lips closing around the thick head cut him off and he sighed.

 

“No, nevermind, go ahead,” he encouraged and her mouth moved down further on his shaft and he let a long moan. “Holy _shit_ that’s good.”

 

She pulled her mouth to the head of his cock and curled her tongue around the head and gave a few pumps with her hand. Mulder clutched at the bed sheets beside him, his hands wanting to be in her hair, touching her back or on her breasts. He made a mental note to do this again in the very near future in a much more mutually beneficial position.

 

Mulder was brought back to his current state. His face was mixed with panic and pleasure. At any moment what if she decided to stop and she changed her mind on this whole thing between them? He couldn’t live his life knowing this was possible and never have it again. He couldn’t go back to being friends after experiencing this. He was making these internal promises now, while her mouth did wonders to his cock but come morning, he might still be the same self-centered sorry son of a bitch he’s always been.

 

Another hand took his balls into her palm and massaged gently before moving to the base of his penis where his shaft and testes met. As she licked and sucked on the head of his dick, the other massaged at the base and Mulder wondered if it was in poor taste to come two minutes into the blow job of his life time.

 

The massaging stilled, and her hand held firmly onto the base of his shaft as she moved her mouth down before following with her lips, up and down, repeating the action a few times. She hollowed her cheeks and sucked harder, taking him all the way into the back of her throat before bobbing her head back up.

 

“Scully...” he warned. He was getting close.

 

She repeated her action a few more times, up and down, up and down. She slowed down, grazing her teeth along his member before repeating her earlier motions. Her mouth hollowed out again, she sucked hard and Mulder could feel his orgasm begin to build, his balls feeling tight as they were about to empty into her mouth.

 

“Scully...” he urged again.

 

Ever diligent and persistent in all things, Scully continued her motions and Mulder shouted her name as he felt his cum shoot out of him like a bullet. When his spasms stopped she released his member and placed a soft kiss on his thigh as he had to her.

 

She sat up in front of him, naked and looking somewhat proud of herself. His instinct was to pull her to him and hold her so he did that.

 

“Are you still tired?” he asked.

 

Scully nodded and looked at the watch on his wrist. “We have an hour before dinner service.”

 

Mulder nodded and let her climb off of him so she could put on panties and her shirt. He slipped on his boxers and grabbed the quilt he set down earlier. They climbed into the bed with one another, ready for a short slumber after taking a giant step together.

 

He patted the space next to him and she maneuvered closer, her body pressed against his and breathing in his comforting scent.

 

“I love you, Mulder,” she whispered into his chest.

 

He kissed the top of her hair. “I know.”


	5. Chapter 5

The train had stopped in Chicago late that afternoon as Mulder and Scully had napped and they were on the long stretch to D.C. that would take approximately seventeen hours via Amtrak. Mulder ignored the messages on his phone service from Kersh that asked why the hell he didn’t get off the train and fly an hour and a half back to Washington.

The car rocked them back and forth gently as they picked at their dinner plates and Scully’s foot brushed against his leg in an obvious manner. He watched her methodically cut her chicken into small bites before stabbing a piece then skewering some of her garden salad she had carefully added a fat free dressing to. Mulder took healthy bites of his creamy pasta and studied her further as he thought back over the last few years.

“I can’t remember the last time I watched you go to town on a burger,” Mulder noted.

Scully paused mid-chew with a drip of the raspberry dressing on her bottom lip. “Hmm?”

“Nevermind,” he replied and took another bite of the flavourful cavateppi noodles from his unbreakable dishware.

She chewed for a moment and took a hesitant sip of her water. “I like the way I feel when I’m eating healthier. You wouldn’t understand that since you treat your stomach like a garbage disposal.”

Mulder licked his bottom lip. “I have standards.”

Scully chuffed in laughter and took another bite of her spiced chicken. “It’s good to eat well.”

“It’s not about your weight or something is it?” he asked dumbly and she raised an eyebrow. “I mean because you don’t need to and I would have hoped after the bee pollen kick you were less inclined to starvation and superfoods.”

“Superfoods such as quinoa are high in calories for the right reasons Mulder,” she replied and shifted in her chair. “And while I may have decided after my cancer I wouldn’t let my weight be something I obsessed over, it was more difficult to keep in shape while we worked under Kersh at the bull pen. I couldn’t take off in the middle of the day to play basketball.”

“I told you to come join me on more than one occasion,” Mulder replied with a smile.

“Right.”

“I said this before and at the risk of repeating myself, you should know you have a really amazing figure,” he said earnestly as he tried to maintain eye contact. She flushed a little and looked down at her plate. “I mean it.”

“I appreciate that you notice,” she said quietly. “Anyway. You could launch an investigation into all the fast food restaurants and the manufacturers for what they’re doing to our food. However, I will reiterate that the less ingredients in my food, the better. Especially with four-syllable chemically based ingredients.”

Mulder set down his fork and dabbed at his mouth. “Are you suggesting that the chemicals in our food are linked to health problems?”

“I’ve suggested it before. I’m sure someone will do a documentary on it soon,” she replied as she predicted a movie to air in 2004 about this very issue. “It’s all money. The less they can spend on food and paying their employers adds to a fatter bottom line to these companies. It’s despicable.”

“I just got very turned on,” Mulder quipped and as her cheeks flushed, the top of her foot found the back of his calf again. “You’re talking like me, Scully.”

“Is that what you like?” she asked with a smile. Her eyes were studying her plate and the food she had left to eat.

“I like when you look deeper,” he replied. “I like hearing you with questions beyond ‘Mulder, why are we here?’ or ‘Mulder, how is this an X-File?’ So sure, I’d love to look into something that you bring to the office.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think you’d get very far with that,” she said with sigh. “I imagine that big pharmaceutical companies have enough congressmen and senators in their pockets as they do heads of major corporations that change the way we eat.”

“What’s your theory?” Mulder asked as he leaned forward onto his elbows.

“Our cells and DNA are made up from what we put into our bodies. Food, liquids, everything. If we ingest it, our bodies use that to replace our cells with what we’ve fed it. If we’re sick from our food, we get treated. If we pay for medication and hospitals, the people who have control over all of this make more money on anyone who can’t afford organic or food not touched by chemicals,” she replied quietly as though the idea had been floating around in her head for years. “I don’t know if you’re starting to see that it makes for a bigger class divide when those who are in control continue to subvert to the lesser classes all due to financial gain.”

Mulder smiled at her. “When did you become this person?”

“This is me, Mulder,” she replied. “It’s something I’ve noticed over the last few years. The quality of health of the average American is abysmal. Our office rarely investigates instances outside of the paranormal. Kersh would be the first to remind you this isn’t in our purview. These industries are crooked but not at all outside of the realm of science. The quality of food, the lack of support to local farmers and the increase in people being treated for things that didn’t used to kill Americans before the age of 85. There’s actually a series in JAMA about treating the body before it’s sick with healthier foods. Actual health care before sick care, Mulder.”

“Would you suspect the government’s covering up these issues and agendas?” he asked with a conspiratorial gleam to his eyes.

“By ‘the government’ you mean the lawmakers at the capitol to the executives in our building?” she asked and he nodded. “After everything that I’ve seen, I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Oh god,” Mulder groaned and covered his face. He leaned forward again. “I gotta say this is really turning me on.”

Scully sat up a little straight to try to glance at his trousers and then smiled at him. “You should let me tell you my theory about the connection to autoimmune disorders and the food we eat.”

His hand went to the fly of his jeans and he adjusted himself slightly. “You’re shameless.”

“I can’t believe this does it for you over me telling you a fantasy of mine,” she said as she picked up her fork again.

“Oh no Miss Scully,” Mulder held up a protesting finger. “I would gladly listen to that too.”

“Pervert,” she muttered with a smile.

“God, you have no idea,” he said with a laugh. She laughed too.

****

A steward had come by to turn down their bed which actually meant making them both to a standard William Scully Sr. would have appreciated. The sight of both beds turned down reminded Mulder of the divide that still persisted and the possibility for Scully to put up walls between them.

If there was going to be another hiccup along the way, he anticipated it to be Dana Scully creating a boundary between them. He worried she still had one foot out the door even after the steps they had taken over the last few days. He knew she loved him. He knew she would be loyal to him. His fear is that she would compare their budding romance to past failed relationships. Her scientific mind could look at logic and fact, of all the things they had working against them, and decide over her heart.

What he knew about her dating history was that after dating men from her world of medicine and the FBI, she searched for something outside of these worlds to find Ethan. The television producer didn’t stand a chance but she had spent eighteen glorious months lying to herself that this relationship would work when it was doomed to fail after her transfer into the X-Files. Mulder overheard her tell Melissa on the phone that ‘Ethan Minette wouldn’t share Dana Scully with any male partner, platonic or otherwise’ and soon after that phone call Mulder discovered that Scully was putting Ethan’s things in a box and asking for her key back.

So why would Mulder be different? Did she see in him a long-time companion? Was he ready for a serious commitment? He shook his head at the thought. He didn’t have a life outside of Scully and their work so a life without her didn’t seem like a plausible solution. She was it for him.

If someone had told twenty-five year old Fox Mulder that he would be swearing off all other women after some heated kisses and one mutually beneficial encounter of oral sex, he would have laughed in their face. But there was an addendum to this notion. This woman made him absolutely crazy in every single way. She was beautiful and smart, kind and cunning and she didn’t back down from a fight. She was everything he wanted in someone and he had to make her understand that without scaring her. He couldn’t take the usual when it came to pouring his heart out to a woman, which was an almost-afraid look and the regretful conversation starter, “Fox, look...”

Scully had unpacked her toothbrush and face wash, placing them orderly near the sink. He could hear her humming as she applied whatever mask to her face and begin her nightly routine that didn’t include a shower. Mulder slowly undressed into his sweatpants and hung his jeans in the closet while his shirt and sweater went back into his bag. He took out some clean items for the next day and found his toothbrush.

He leaned against the doorway as he watched her scrub her face with hot water. The green face mask she used dripped off into the sink and down the tiny drain. The first thing Mulder thought when he saw the space was that showering would prove to be more crammed and not at all the place for any acrobatics or even company. Pity.

“How does that stuff work?” Mulder asked.

Scully glanced up from the sink and grabbed a towel from the bar to clean her face with. “It tightens and tones, refreshes and something else.”

Mulder took the damp towel from her and dabbed at the edges of her face to get the parts that were still green and gunky. “Looks good.”

“I don’t know. The last time I saw Ellen she gave me a case of it and I think it works,” Scully admitted.

He forgot the girlish parts to Scully that liked a beautiful bouquet of flowers on her dining table or appreciated reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s with a pint of Rocky Road. He liked that side but often forgot she existed when she spent the day spouting off scientific jargon that was its own language he wouldn’t know.

“I see how you’re a woman but the girlish side of you that likes to shop always surprises me,” Mulder replied and she tilted her head. “I don’t know. It really rounds you out as a person but my brain just drops those things into a box labeled “Scully Miscellaneous” and doesn’t always recall that box exists.”

“What else is in that box?” she asked coquettishly.

“Little things but things I like,” he said as their fingers intertwined. “You keep a box of brownie mix in the back of your pantry in case you need a sugar fix. You like to organize your spices alphabetically. You have a completely different set of sweaters you wear to church that you never wear to work - which is a damn shame because some of them are pretty great - and you spend way too much money on your shoes. I like that you donate money to your church but you’d rather buy a homeless man a cup of coffee. I like that you have an eclectic taste in music but you go to classical or 70s soul music because you grew up in California and that makes no sense. You spend time straightening the natural curl in your hair every day except when you’re around your family. Then you let it curl and you dress in those sweaters I like.”

“Those are just little facts about me,” she muttered but somewhat embarrassed he had known all those things. “Why do you like those things?”

“You’re not just a scientist or an FBI agent,” he said with a shrug. “I feel like Padgett all of a sudden or some interloper on your life.”

“That attention from Padgett was entirely unexpected and unwanted Mulder,” she replied. “This is different.”

“The stranger and the strict doctor tangled their bodies...” Mulder began to quote and Scully put her hand over his lips to stop him from continuing a quote that made her feel queasy.

“Nothing he wrote about me made me feel good,” she insisted. “Flattered maybe but uncomfortable. You’re not him..”

“For all the family dinners I’ve interrupted and times I’ve pulled you away from your quiet weekend plans...”

Scully pulled his mouth down for a kiss that was long and sweet. It was deep and meaningful. She pulled her mouth away and pressed her forehead into his. “I remember fighting against the intrusion on my life.”

“Now?” he asked as she kissed along his jaw.

“I should be so lucky to have someone turning my life upside down Mulder,” she whispered against his neck.

Mulder ran his hands up her body and pulled her to him tightly. “I want to deserve this.”

“You do,” she replied as she hugged him back.

“I keep expecting something to mess it up,” he admitted. “Like something I’m going to do.”

“Don’t you think we’re past the little things?” she asked as she pulled away to look into his eyes. He saw her worry and doubt. “What have we got to lose?”

“Twenty four hours ago I was declaring a life with a significant other a little hard to imagine because I didn’t know how you felt and today I feel like the world is my oyster because you like me back,” he said.

“I do like you back,” she replied with a secretive smile.

“I don’t mean to sound like I’m in junior high but...”

“But?”

“Scully,” Mulder started seriously. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

She laughed at that and his cheeks flushed. “Yes.”

“I’ll carry your books or whatever the equivalent is as an adult,” he offered in a low voice.

“Chivalrous acts of kindness won’t go unnoticed,” she encouraged.

His eyebrow raised. “I like that idea.”

“I never understood why it was a surprise to men when the woman responded to well-intended actions in kind,” she replied. “Human beings as a whole love to be noted and appreciated.”

“Is that what kept this from happening sooner?” Mulder asked in complete innocence. “I’m fairly selfish and don’t appreciate you enough.”

“Do you think this would have worked when we first started working together?” she countered and Mulder pursed his lips. Slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t either.”

“But now?” he asked.

“Now I think we can have this without overwhelming conditions,” she suggested.

She smiled in that way that showed the tip of her gums. He loved that little smile.

Mulder peppered her face with kisses and hugged her close to him. “No ifs ands or bees?”

“You’re such a sap, Mulder,” she quipped with a giggle and he scratched his stubbled cheek against her neck. “Scratchy beard.”

It was all so light and wonderful between them. They had yet to discuss how this would work once they got home. They hadn’t gone on a case as a couple or argued over a theory while they got ready in the morning. They had yet to make love and work through the emotions in the aftermath of it.

“Is it totally sappy to want to brush my teeth and hold you all night?”

“I’ll give you a pass since you have that gin in your bag,” Scully replied and kissed his cheek.

“Too bad this room doesn’t have a TV. We could watch bad movies and get inappropriate under the covers,” Mulder teased.

“Why don’t you get the cups and mix while I think of something fun?” she suggested and the low octave in her tone went right to his dick.

In a surge of hormones he wouldn’t apologize for, he pushed her toward the bed and kissed her for all she was worth. He grabbed at the flesh on her back before his hands took the meat of her backside as he ground his pelvis into hers. He wanted her completely but he knew they should wait until they got back to D.C. What they should do was becoming more difficult in comparison to what they could do.

“Mulder,” she whispered as his mouth trailed along her collarbone.

“Hmm?” he asked as he nipped at her skin.

They were slowly making their way vertically to the bed and she wasn’t pushing him away. She was pulling at the material of his shirt. She was pushing her hips up towards his.

“Let’s forget the gin,” she suggested. Her hand edged under the waistband of his jeans and found him hard under the material of his boxer shorts. “I would rather...”

“I thought you wanted to wait?” he clarified.

“Maybe a bit more of what we did this afternoon?” she said with a shrug of one shoulder and a hesitant tone. It was a contradiction to the firm grip she had on his cock. “If you don’t mind?”

“Scully,” he sighed. “I promise I would never mind.”

Their mouths met again and she slid her tongue past his teeth as her hand pumped again. His hips thrust into her palm and Mulder tried to focus on every feeling. Her grip on his cock was the exact pressure he liked. Her mouth was moving against his in the ways he loved to be kissed. Her body was small underneath his in the way that made him feel like a man.

He pulled her hand away to pin it on the bed next to her head. He grabbed her other hand that was playing against the muscles on his back and trapped it on the other side of her head.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I think I’m trying to prolong this engagement for as long as it can be completely beneficial for you,” he replied and he kissed at her neck. “Although I will admit to getting immense pleasure out of this myself.”

“You actually like to-”

“You have no idea,” he whispered as he began to pull off her trousers.

Scully’s head lifted off the pillow to watch him undress her from the waist down. He sat back on his haunches to study her again.

“I like seeing you like this, Scully,” Mulder admitted and he lifted her left foot to kiss the top of it.

He kissed at the skin on her ankle bone. His mouth created a path that went straight to her centre and he could see her becoming more aroused at the slow seduction of what was coming. As his mouth neared her sex, he pulled away to repeat his actions on her right leg. Kisses on the top of her foot, her ankle, up her calves and on her knees. He licked his tongue on her inner thigh and she shuddered.

Her fingers found his hair and instead of pushing his face to where they both longed for it to be, she gripped the strands at the front in preparation of what was next.

“The skin right here,” Mulder began as he traced at the top of her inner thigh. “It’s so soft. I didn’t know you had freckles everywhere, Scully.”

“I was a little reckless with sunscreen in my youth,” she admitted.

“You didn’t spend a weekend in Maine sunbathing on a beach in between hunting possessed dolls?” Mulder asked against the skin of her thigh.

Scully chuffed. “Not quite. I took a few long baths.”

Mulder smiled. “Anything interesting happen in those baths?”

She sat up and gave him a look that told him something good was coming. “Can I use my hands?”

“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting I beg of you to please finish this thought,” Mulder pleaded with a smile.

Scully took off her shirt and bra before laying down. “Is that the best angle for you to watch?”

Mulder made a noise between a groan and a guttural sigh. “Maybe.”

“Kiss me,” she instructed and he obliged happily. He crawled up her body and she took his hand in hers to guide it to her sex. “Feel me.”

Her lips were swollen and he could feel the wetness of her sex at her opening. Her shortly trimmed hair brushed against his fingers and he desperately wanted to see everything she was doing but her mouth was doing other things to his neck at the moment. If someone used the term “sexual napalm” to describe what she was doing to him he might scoff at the purple prose, however he was feeling completely submitted to this moment. He didn’t care about control or power. He just wanted to please her.

That could be destructive to a man like Mulder yet Scully wouldn’t abuse it. He trusted her with everything else.

“You’re so wet, Scully,” he noted as she pushed his finger inside of her.

“And?” she prompted.

“Tight around my finger,” he described as his middle finger curved toward the front of her wall in search.

Scully pulled his hand out and she placed her right hand between his hand and her sex. “Just feel what I’m doing.”

His eyes met hers as his hand learned exactly how she liked to be touched. Slowly, deliberately and in a precise circle that she had learned over the years was successful to finding her release. He felt as she traced her finger around her clit then across it before dipping her finger inside her. She focused on the bundle of nerves that he had licked and tasted hours before and he longed for the chance to do it again.

He wanted to taste her, to make her come at his own ministrations and have her writhe underneath him. Or maybe she could be on top of him because if she sat on his face while wearing a fitted black skirt and white blouse it would be fulfilling about thirty fantasies he had harboured for longer than he would like to admit.

A moan escaped her lips as she pushed her middle finger inside her walls and she made a wider circle with her finger.

“Scully,” he whispered as his hand left hers to touch his throbbing cock. “I gotta... I need...”

“Take your pants off, Mulder,” she instructed quietly.

Mulder rolled onto his back and quickly removed his jeans and shorts. He tossed his shirt towards where Scully’s clothing had landed when he undressed her.

He turned over on his side and took his cock in his hand as he kissed the skin on her collarbone. “Don’t stop, Scully.”

She looked down as his hand pumped up and down and her eyes closed briefly as her own hand began to move again. They were sharing in something so private and so personal. As they touched themselves as they had the last few years while longing for the other, they had the sounds and sight of each other just millimeters away. The feeling of his swollen flesh in his hand as he brushed his knuckles against her was elicit and enticing.

“What do you feel Scully?” he asked as his hand left his cock to place his palm over her breast.

“I’m feeling a..” she paused and moaned. “Oh God, there’s a... I don’t know a tingling building up inside of me and the nerves are... Um...”

“What?” he asked as he kissed her neck.

“Sensitive,” she described. “It’s not the word I would use but I feel everything throbbing and swelling.”

“And when I kiss here?” Mulder asked and nipped at the nerves on her neck.

“It goes right to the places I’m touching,” she sighed.

Mulder’s took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “If I apply a little bit of pressure here while I kiss your neck?”

“I feel it deeper inside,” she moaned.

They both had flushed cheeks and were panting at their exertion. He maneuvered his body half on top of hers and his cock brushed against her thigh, close to her entrance.

“Scully,” he whispered as he thrust his hips against her thigh.

She reached between them and took his dick in her free hand as the other played at her sex. He maneuvered himself between her thighs and she moved her hand to slide the length of him against her lips, creating less friction for her hand. Mulder closed his eyes as he felt her hand pump up and down before she rubbed him against her again.

Their mouths found each other again as they kissed through the overwhelming sensations of the slow approach they were taking to ecstasy. He was now pumping his hips against hers as his cock rubbed at her folds but didn’t dare enter. If he did now, it might be over before they would like. This maddening dance was enough for the time being.

He leaned on one elbow to reach between them and he pushed his finger inside of her. Scully moaned long and loud before she pushed her face into her arm to muffle the noises. At this hour, they would definitely have an audience on the train. His arm twisted and he tried to maneuver his finger to crook forward to find a particularly elusive spot. It would be a little spongy and a little bumpy.

“Oh my god!” she shouted and pushed her face into his neck. A long moan escaped her. “Oh my god!”

Her hand went to her clit again and she began to move her finger back and forth to assist a release. Mulder watched in fascination as her rapture took over and her body went taught underneath him.

“Oh my fuck,” she cried quietly. “Oh my god.”

He felt her swell against his hand and fluid rushed at his palm as she shuddered underneath him. Mulder couldn’t help himself as he pumped his hips and unabashedly pushed his cock against her thigh as she came. His release was feeling eminent but he had the notion that messing their sheets with his own ejaculation might not be appreciated by her.

When she opened her eyes, she smiled at him and looked down at his now twitching cock.

“You didn’t come?”

“I need a towel or something to finish into,” he replied regretfully. “I didn’t want to mess the only clean sheets.”

Scully thought for a moment. “You’re going to think that it’s strange I have this in my bag...”

She got off the bed and took a few wobbly steps over to her carry on. She pulled out a latex condom still in its shiny foiled wrapper and showed him triumphantly as she sat on the bed next to him.

“Why do you have that in there?” he asked as he took the packet from her.

“It’s this silly forensic’s trick by putting test tubes in latex condoms for transport,”she replied as she took the packet from him and tore it open with her teeth. She took the latex sheath out of its packet and slowly pushed the case down his cock. “I’ve lost samples in the field before so I try not to travel without them.”

“Not because you’re hoping to meet a dangerous man on the road and take him to your hotel room while your dopey partner sleeps ten feet away?” Mulder guessed.

Scully’s hand paused an inch away from his cock. “Does that sound like my fantasy or yours?”

“My fantasies have all involved you for longer than you’d like to know,” he replied.

Her mouth twitched in a smirk and she wrapped her hand around him. “Not as much fun as the real thing?”

Mulder closed his eyes. “You’d be surprised what watching you does to a man.”

She pushed him onto his back on the bed and straddled his thighs. She took his cock in her hand and began to pump up and down. He wanted to watch her do this but the sensations were overwhelming. He wanted to touch her everywhere but his hands gripped at her thighs. The strokes were long and firm. Her thumb massaged the tip on each up stroke and he felt the familiar build up of his own surrender into elation.

“Open your eyes, Mulder,” she instructed.

Obediently he did and he could see her above him, touching herself as she touched him.

“Oh god,” he moaned and his fingers gripped her hips harder.

The visual stimulus with the physical catalyst would push him to the edge. Watching Dana Scully touch her breasts and finger at her folds while she held his cock in his hand was more than he thought he would ever see in his lifetime.

“God you’re beautiful,” he whispered as his hand moved between them in aching desire to touch her.

As if she read his mind, she pushed his hand into her entrance as she rode his fingers and pumped at his cock. To be touched by her while touching her and watch her as she mimicked the actions of her hand with her pelvis was what he needed.

“I’m gonna come,” he warned and she nodded. “Oh god, Scully I’m gonna come.”

She bit her lip as she continued to ride up on his hand and pumped at his cock. “I’m just imagining doing this to you, Mulder. I want you to imagine your dick inside me while I ride you. Feel me around you.”

“Fuuuuuck, Scully,” he moaned. “Oh fuck!”

“Did you like what I did with my mouth earlier, Mulder?” she asked as she continued to move up and down. “How I sucked you off?”

“I can’t fucking believe in my life Dana Scully is talking dirty to me, holy shit,” he muttered quickly and his eyes closed as his release burst from him into the casing around his dick.

It surged and swelled as he shuddered into her hand and she let out a long moan. She was coming again too. Fuck.

As she collapsed on the bed next to him, panting and smiling, Mulder couldn’t believe what had just happened.

“Scully?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she panted.

“I think you just made me your bitch,” he mused.

She laughed as she rolled onto her side to touch his chest. “On what do you base that?”

“I’m speaking sexually of course but I just really can’t fathom anything else in my life ever measuring up to that with anyone else,” he replied as he tried to remove the condom. He tied off the top and set it on the bed next to his hip. “I mean... Where the hell did that come from?”

“Did you expect a shrinking violet or someone unsure?” she asked as she traced a finger up his arm. “The women at your XXX lines aren’t the only ones who talk like that, Mulder.”

“I hoped the passion you had for work could translate sexually underneath your strict exterior,” he admitted. “I like the playful side of you. The side that talks dirty. And those XXX lines stopped being useful in 1998.”

“You’re never going to not appreciate what I said tonight, are you?” she muttered with a shake of her head. Her cheeks flushed and he could see an almost repentance across her face.

“What’s not to appreciate?” he asked. “I think you blew my mind as I blew my-”

“That might not be a term I appreciate,” she interrupted and he laughed. “I mean... Maybe a bit too-”

“Are you going to hold it against me if I slip up?” he asked.

She leaned over his face and kissed his mouth softly. “Never.”

He felt like the luckiest son-of-a-bitch if there ever was one.

“How am I supposed to know where the lines are?” he asked.

“You have common sense, don’t you Mulder?” she asked as she climbed over him on the bed and took the used condom to bathroom. She wrapped it in a tissue and deposited it in the side wall rubbish compartment next to the sink. “That was rhetorical.”

“I’m thinking,” he told her. “I was trying to think of the last healthy relationship I was in and the landmines.”

“If you have a lot of landmines, you might not be thinking of a healthy relationship,” she replied as she washed her hands. “I can say this because I have waded through a fair few many, myself.”

Mulder watched as she crossed the room to find her night clothes. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find PJs,” she explained.

He maneuvered himself under the covers and patted the bed next to him. “Come on Laura.”

“Naked?” she clarified.

“No clothing after sex is one of my requests,” he told her as she slid into the bed next to him. He kissed her shoulder. “It’s not a sleeping bag but I feel pretty lucky.”

“Hit the lights, Mulder,” she quipped as she settled into the bed. “I want to get up for early breakfast service.”

He did as he was told before snaking his long limbs around hers. “I’m a cuddler.”

“Oh no,” Scully laughed. “I should have figured.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

Through the night, Mulder had anticipated an emergency on the train, a monster that needed investigating or something like a murder to interrupt his blissful state of their new relationship status. Instead, he actually got to cuddle up to Scully for six and a half blissful hours, just like baby cats.

When he had repeated that phrase from last year in Arcadia Falls to refer to their sleeping arrangement last night, she opened her mouth to reply but refrained. Instead, she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and showered alone.

He slowly realized that he had anxiety over something coming, a hiccup or an approaching problem, and it was noticed by Scully. At breakfast with four hours left on their trip, she snapped her paper in front of her face and sipped her coffee quietly.

“What?”

“You what?” she countered as her paper lowered enough to give him a judging look. “You’ve been acting strange since we got up this morning.”

Mulder took a sip of his coffee. “I’m not.”

“Fine,” she replied and pulled her paper back in front of her face.

He looked out the window as they traveled through the thickened brush of Maryland and he shifted in his seat. “You ever just get a feeling something might go wrong?”

Scully set her paper down next to her plate of melons and berries. “Because you’re making something difficult or you think an outside force might?”

Mulder took another sip of his coffee and set it down on the saucer before answering. “I think if I did some self-reflection I’m probably being a bit of an ass.”

Scully fought a smile. “Do you know why?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted in a sullen tone and they both chuffed in laughter. “I think what I’m anticipating is some emergency to come up or personal issues to screw this up between us. I don’t want our... progress to be derailed if you’ll excuse the train pun.”

Scully sighed and reached across the table to grab his hand. “Mulder, out of the two of us, I really anticipated my own issues with intimacy to be the thing that caused a tiff this morning.”

“Hey don’t sell yourself short,” Mulder quipped. “Maybe it will come up later this week when I want to have a sleepover and you don’t want me in your space on a school night.”

“That sounds like me,” she admitted.

“And I’ll feel hurt and probably act a little petulant,” Mulder continued as he picked up her hand and brought her wrist to his mouth. “Then I’ll have to make some grand gesture like hold a boom-box outside your window with an 80s rock ballad to express my feelings.”

“Please do not do that,” she laughed. “My building has already lodged a few complaints about me and the late hours you’ve come by to visit.”

“I’ve always been quiet,” he protested as he kissed her wrist again. He saw a flush on her cheeks and he smiled. “This spot here?”

She nodded and shifted in her seat.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied and kissed the spot again.

“Be sure that you do,” she replied and ran a finger up the inside of the strap on her tank top to her collar bone.

It was periwinkle blue and contrasted nicely under the black suit she had on. Professional Scully these days wore flirtier outfits that offered necklines Mulder could now leer at freely with respect and affection but also, obviously, sexual desire that was welcomed. It did Mulder a world of good to hear Scully reaffirm to him that his admiration would not be unrequited.

“I don’t want to let some miscommunication and hurt feelings get in the way of us now, Scully,” Mulder told her earnestly and her gaze met with his. “Don’t you think we’ve come too far for that?”

If there was a handbook on how to maneuver through this without screwing things up, he would be thrilled to discover such a thing but he knew he was only half the equation. He was determined to make this work by not becoming someone he didn’t recognize and she likewise.

“I don’t want this or expectations we don’t voice to be something we resent each other over,” she admitted and he nodded. “I don’t want-”

“Hey!”

Mulder looked up to see Ted and Jenny, from earlier in their travels, standing in front of them with happy faces and expectant smiles.

“Just in time for breakfast,” Ted noted as he looked at their table suited for four that only had two occupants.

Mulder looked over to Scully and back up to Ted. The breakfast car was busy but not overly so. There was maybe one other table open, however he could see where this was going and Scully, who hated to be impolite, was about to invite these strangers to join them.

“You know we were just about to finish up,” Mulder started.

“Nonsense!” Ted waved his hand at Mulder and his relief lasted a beat. “Join your lady on the other side there and we can join you.”

Mulder looked over for a sign she wanted them gone but she was moving her handbag to the floor at her feet and folding her paper to make room for him to move to her side of the table.

“Tough luck about them kicking us off the train in Baltimore,” Ted noted as he watched Jenny slide into the bench across from Scully.

Mulder looked over to his partner as she was trying to catch his gaze. “What did you say?”

“We won’t be getting into Union Station like they promised us,” Jenny stated as she pushed her hair behind her shoulders and smiled at the pair.

“What happened?” Scully asked.

“It’s not going to Washington,” Jenny answered as though that was enough of an explanation.

This adventure to Jenny and Ted was exactly that. However, to Mulder it had become another cock-blocking moment to prevent penetration. Immediately he rebuked himself at the description and realized his desperation was making him say things about sex with Scully other than the respectful and marvelous. The impatient side of him wondered if it was possible to die from blue balls even though he had come twice yesterday. The frustration on his part came from the longing desire to be alone with Scully, in her apartment or his, with nothing between them and her astride his face before he finally felt himself inside of her. He needed to show off what he was capable of in a proper bed and a disregard to neighbours listening.

“Baltimore?” he repeated.

“They made an announcement yesterday afternoon after lunch,” Ted replied.

Mulder thought back to how they could have missed a train-wide announcement, however he was happily distracted yesterday afternoon with the woman next to him being totally naked while she swirled her tongue-

“Yeah!” Jenny replied as she interrupted his thoughts. “We thought we’d take a bus but Teddy pointed out if we rent a car, we can get the points.”

Mulder guessed whatever issues they were having in St. Louis were buried under the romance of train travel.

“The four of us could go in on a car,” Ted offered with a smile as he glanced over to Scully. “Split the difference.”

Jenny’s eyes lit up and she reached across the table to Scully. “Oh, it would be great!”

How could they possibly explain needing the business expense of a receipt from the rental car when Mulder was supposed to be a writer and she was a doctor?

“I’ll just need to make a phone call,” Scully replied. “We have someone picking us up at Union Station.”

Mulder sat back against the bench seat and tried not to pout but he was quickly losing the internal battle. He tried to tell himself that if they could wait seven years for a kiss, what was a few more hours?

Scully reached under the table and put her hand on Mulder’s leg. She patted at his knee reassuringly before sliding her hand up the inside of his thigh to brush against the tip of his dick. While smiling politely at their forced guests, Mulder’s hand covered Scully’s to move it slightly away from his crotch. Her fingers interlaced with his and as he looked over to her face, she appeared unphased at their duel under the table. A steward came by to distract Jenny and Ted from the shenanigans across the table as they placed their breakfast order.

“What brought you two to Des Moines?” Jenny asked after the steward took their order.

Scully’s hand removed itself from Mulder’s grip to squeeze his inner thigh. “My cousin was getting married.”

“Do you have a lot of family there?” Jenny asked.

“No, she’s a distant cousin,” Scully said with a sigh. “You know I think it was the first time we had seen each other since we were kids. But as your parents go, you start to reconnect with lost family.”

Jenny nodded and looked at Scully in earnest. “Have you lost both your parents Laura?”

Mulder recalled at that moment they were going by a pseudonym and not to slip up with a last name moniker chose to push on his partner seven years ago. Now, calling her Dana sounded almost foreign and he wished it didn’t.

“Just my dad,” Scully replied.

“You two hear all the raucous in the car last night?” Ted asked as he grinned at Mulder. “Some couple going at it like it was some kind of contest.”

Mulder almost choked on his coffee. “What car?”

“We’re in the third car from the back,” Jenny replied. “It went on for hours. Moaning and calling out names I couldn’t make out.”

“They had a good time. Twice I think because it was during the day too,” Ted noted and laughed a little. “Lucky bastard.”

“It was kind of lewd,” Jenny protested. “What car are you two in?”

“We’re in the-”

“Third car,” Mulder finished for Scully. “Did you hear anything, Laura?”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I didn’t hear anything Rob.”

“Some things you just don’t do on a train,” Jenny said with a shake of her head. “Wait twenty-four hours to when you get home!”

“If you do, you could at least keep it down so the rest of us don’t have to feel jealous,” Ted replied and thanked the steward when his coffee and eggs arrived.

Thankfully they moved onto another topic, however Mulder could hear Scully’s mind racing as they made small talk with their forced friends. It would be a long three hours until they arrived in Baltimore.

 

****

Mulder stood in front of the bank of phones at the station in Baltimore while Scully fetched their luggage with a cart. He had lost the Roshambo as they exited the train with their carry-on bags of who was going to call Kersh.

Jenny and Ted had offered one last time to share a car with Mulder and Scully after breakfast but Scully gracefully declined in such a way that it seemed they were happy with their departure. She had the social skills with people that sometimes Mulder didn’t have the patience for.

Scully came up behind him with the cart stacked with their luggage. She glanced up at Mulder before looking at the payphones.

“Are you deciding which one would be lucky?” she asked with the knowledge Mulder liked to pick things by chance and feeling over the logic any phone could result in the same conversation.

“You jest, but I’m honestly wondering if I choose the first phone, will I have a better call with Kersh than if I choose the one on the far left,” he replied.

Scully walked up the third phone from the right. She popped two quarters into the phone and dialed the main line for the switchboard for the J. Edgar Hoover building. When she turned to Mulder, she held the receiver out to him to take.

“It’s ringing,” she prompted him.

Mulder dropped his head back and reluctantly joined her in the booth, bringing their cart closer to where they were standing.

“Best two out of three?” Mulder requested as he took the phone from her.

Scully smiled tightly and shook her head in refusal.

He brushed past her into the phone booth and waited for Kersh to answer his line.

“Deputy Director Kersh’s office,” a syrupy voice answered and Mulder could picture his blonde assistant swinging her leg under her desk.

“Hi, this is Agent Mulder,” he started.

“Oh Agent Mulder, we were wondering when you were going to be checking in,” she answered sweetly. Mulder always forgot her name but assumed it was something girlish of her generation like Lisa or Karen. “Director Kersh is just in a meeting at the moment but I’ll see if he is willing to take your call.”

“That’s not-” Mulder started. He rolled his eyes as the phone clicked to put him on hold and the Muzak played. He looked at Scully. “She put me on hold.”

“I only put two quarters in. If the phone cuts off while you’re talking to him, you’re in deeper-”

“Director Kersh, it’s Agent Mulder,” he cut her off as their boss came on the line.

Kersh let out a long breath and Mulder could hear his teeth grind through the phone. “Agent Mulder.”

“Our train from St. Louis kicked us off in Baltimore and we’re just procuring a rental-”

“You will be doing so on your own dime, Agent,” Kersh interrupted. The man detested when anyone interrupted him however felt free to do so to the agents underneath him as a way of asserting more dominance.

“Sir?” Mulder asked.

“You were supposed to be back in Washington yesterday,” Kersh replied tersely.

“Our plane had difficulties. We were put on a train without the option of another flight and now you want me to pay for my own car while you’re chewing my ass out because-”

Scully grabbed the phone from Mulder and the cord pushed into his chest as she stretched it across the booth. “Yes sir! We will get from Baltimore to Washington on our own.”

“It’s an hour by car to my office. I expect you here no less than ninety minutes,” Kersh replied and hung up the phone.

Scully handed the receiver to Mulder. “Really?”

“Scully give me a break,” he cried. “He wants us to pay for a car on our own like I caused the mechanical difficulties, created the two extra nights away from Washington and then halted the train ride from getting us to Union Station. If I had that much control over simple elements in my life I would have stopped a bee before I stopped that damn plane.”

Her face recognized the weight of what he was saying and he could see her relax a little. “It’s been a long two days of travel. We could always try to find Jenny and Ted and hitch a ride with them.”

“Please dear God no,” Mulder replied as he took the cart from her. “I would rather take a bus than sit and listen to them describe the nineteen different places they sampled the best cheeses and jams in Maine.”

“The jam and cheese bothered you?” she clarified. “I would have thought it was hearing Ted talk about how he likes to ‘take a seat while Jenny does the work’ if you know what he means. We all knew what he meant.”

“I find that travel brings out the oversharing in people,” Mulder replied. “And they never figured out we were their noisy neighbours.”

“Don’t remind me,” she muttered as she left his side to head back toward the bank of phones.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling for a ride,” she replied as she picked up the phone. Her fingers dialled quickly at a familiar number.

“Please don’t-”

“Hi, Mom?”

“I’m paying a penance to God for everyone hearing us on that train, I see that,” Mulder replied and Scully gave him a look that told him to shut up. “Sorry.”

“Yeah we’re in Baltimore,” she said. “Any chance you have time to give us a ride into D.C.?”

“If she’s bringing us into work, I want a note from her that excuses us from the meeting with Kersh,” Mulder replied.

“What? No that’s just Mulder grumbling,” she replied and shot him another look. “Great, see you in fifteen.”

Scully hung up the phone and then pinched Mulder’s arm before heading toward the bathrooms with her purse.

 

***

Maggie Scully’s luxury sedan sped on the highway from Baltimore to the downtown area of Washington D.C. where the J. Edgar Hoover building awaited meetings and scoldings.

Maggie cleared her throat as Scully instructed her to pull onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “Dana?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“What’s wrong with your cell phone?” Maggie asked as she pulled into the drop off area out front. “I tried calling the last two days.”

“My phone ran out of batteries in Des Moines and my charger was packed away with my luggage on the train,” Scully replied and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Recalling events from the train meant coming close to the truth about the last 48 hours. Mulder wondered if Maggie could sense the shift in their relationship.

“Why were you calling me?” Scully asked. “Was something wrong?”

“Bill and Tara are in town,” Maggie replied. “His dinner is tonight and I was hoping you’d be able to come.”

“My attendance this evening might be conditional on my work situation this afternoon,” Scully replied.

“You wouldn’t want to write us a note, would you Mrs. Scully?” Mulder teased from the back seat.

“If you’re free, Fox will come too,” Maggie invited, ignoring Mulder’s comments as she put the car in park.

The invitation was non-negotiable and Mulder couldn’t decide if it would be better to spend the evening across from Scully in the basement with work or surrounded by her family. Both situations wouldn’t allow for any kind of hanky panky whether it was the cold judgmental stare from Bill or extra paperwork from Kersh.

Scully leaned across the seat to kiss Maggie’s cheek. “I’ll call you when we get out of our meeting.”

“I’ll take your luggage back to your apartment Dana,” Maggie offered.

Mulder waved to Maggie as she drove off and looked down at the carry-on bags at their feet. “Is God punishing us?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” Scully noted as she picked up her bag.

He put the strap of his duffle over his shoulder and took her bag from her. “I wonder if there’s some outside force preventing my happiness.”

Scully looked up toward the clouds and then to Mulder. “Are you worried he knows your thoughts and what you plan to do with me later?”

He smiled at her comment. “I’m sure he might not approve of the reasons why I have you calling his name later this evening.”

A flush filled her cheeks and her tongue ran along her lower lip. “Mulder, you honestly say the sweetest things.”

They shared a laugh and headed into the building through the front doors. They had to leave their luggage with security before heading up to the ninth floor where Kersh was waiting to deliver their lashing.

In the elevator, he mused at how much trouble was actually awaiting them. If he was being honest, their travel arrangements weren’t entirely in their control. As far as Mulder knew, they didn’t have another case pending with the X-Files. Kersh only appreciated controlling their whereabouts to try to prevent their work because he didn’t believe in the work they were doing.

“Agent Mulder, Agent Scully,” Kersh’s secretary greeted as they walked into the outer office. “Have a seat.”

There was a smugness to her tone as though she was privy to the details of the upcoming berating they would be subject to from Alvin Kersh. He wondered if Kersh typed them out before hand or rehearsed them for her to ensure it came across as stern, no-nonsense and belittling enough. At least shutting down their office or taking them off the X-Files wasn’t a threat anymore.

The secretary’s intercom buzzed and there was a glimmer to her eyes before she answered it.

“Yes, sir?” A pause. “I see.” Her expression changed into one of understanding as she listened to the call. “I see. I’ll let them know.”

The phone met the receiver and the pert secretary shifted in her chair.

“You’re dismissed.”

“Excuse me?” Scully asked with an acerbic undertone to her voice.

Dana Scully didn’t like women who shamelessly flirted with her partner in front of her because she was more than just slightly territorial.

“A.D. Skinner got a phone call from the Des Moines field office and Kersh is sending you home. You have tomorrow off,” the secretary explained.

Mulder stood up and approached her desk. “Why?”

“I suppose the fact that you saved five young women, worked days without much sleep and there really wasn’t another option to getting back to D.C. has been made clear to the powers that be,” she replied. Mulder read Denise on her name tag and realized he would have never gotten to that name. “If I were you, I’d leave before Director Kersh hears you. He doesn’t appreciate being undermined on penalties he was prepared to hand out.”

Scully tugged on his jacket sleeve and he turned to catch her gaze. “Come on, Mulder.”

“That was little anticlimactic,” he quipped as he helped her with her jacket. He caught Scully’s expression and smirked. “I mean-”

“Which one of our cars is at Dulles?” Scully interrupted as they left the outer office.

“I can’t remember,” he admitted and walked back toward the elevator. The doors opened and they were thankfully granted an empty car. “I think I picked you up.”

“Are you up for dinner at my mothers?” she asked.

“Are we making a plan for tonight?” he clarified.

“Appointment sex isn’t sexy, I know,” she said regretfully. “But I just want to know what’s going to happen or what you’re hoping for.”

“I want you,” he stated simply. “I want time with you. If it means an evening with the Scully family, I’ll do it. If it means playing nice with Bill, I’ll do my best. And if there’s some kind of end time to this evening that involves you and I naked in bed together-”

The elevator car dinged as two agents got on the car at the fourth floor.

Scully sighed. “I concur Agent Mulder.”

Mulder smiled and leaned back against the wall of the elevator car. Today might just end the way he was hoping.

  
***

It was a thirty dollar cab ride to Mulder’s car at Dulles, a twenty-five minute drive to his apartment where he planned to shower and change, and four minutes of small talk inside his living room before they were making out on his couch like teenagers.

He was supposed to be getting himself ready for dinner at her mothers before they stopped at her apartment for her to get ready. They had a schedule they had discussed sticking to but instead of that, they were kissing open-mouthed with the right amount of tongue.

His jacket and tie were on the coffee table next to her purse. One shoe had slid off her stocking foot while his fingers plucked at the buttons on her blouse. She was astride him with her pelvis grinding into his cock while simultaneously driving him crazy with her mouth and moans.

Her breath was hot on his cheek and his hand covered her breast through her shirt. This was becoming more than kissing. They were groping and grinding as their mouths met again to taste each other.

Every time her mouth pulled away to catch her breath his lips found a new spot on her neck to kiss and tease. He was careful this time to not leave any marks but the temptation was there as she was.

His hands pulled on her suit jacket and pushed it off her slender arms. Her hands were pulling on the hem of his shirt and he wondered if asking her to the bedroom was rushing things or being a proper gentleman. Was now the time or was she wanting to wait another five or six hours until they were back from dinner?

“Mulder?” she started as he pulled his shirt over his head. Her fingers ran along the muscles of his chest and she placed a soft kiss on his puckered scar. “I know we planned for later...”

“Keep going FBI woman...” he encouraged.

“I think now is a good time,” she said.

He thought about the planning and thought he wanted to put into tonight. Flowers, wine, and chocolates were the things she deserved but didn’t need. He shouldn’t be plying her affections with trinkets and cheesy moves but that was all he knew of romance.

To him, it was the most romantic when she told him she trusted only him. To her, it was a declaration of love to tell her he couldn’t go on without her. A basic offering to other couples might seem trite but he would do trite if it meant more of everything else they had together.

“Do you disagree?” she asked and he saw in her eyes a sudden hesitation and worry.

“God no,” he said with a shake of his head. “I would _never_ not want you or this.”

“Then Mulder...” She kissed his neck. “What are we doing still sitting here?”

“I was worried the ambience of my bedroom in the middle of the day without flowers or preparation wasn’t enough,” he admitted.

Scully’s face softened and she kissed his lips. “Are you going to be there?”

Mulder nodded.

“I don’t need anything else,” she said earnestly. “After all we’ve been through together, something without frills sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

Mulder kissed her softly and sweetly. “You deserve frills.”

“It’s good for us that you want to do that,” she replied. “But right now, I think I just want to go to bed and then take you to dinner at my mother’s house and see my judgemental brother.”

Mulder closed his eyes. “That almost killed my erection.”

Her hand reached between them to stroke him once. “Almost? Not likely.”

“Busted,” he admitted with a shake of his head and they laughed.

Fun, laughing sex was a good sign.

Scully’s cell rang at that moment and her hand stilled as they looked to one another. The phone shrilled again and again before the caller hung up. Their mouths met again without interruption until Mulder’s landline rang.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Mulder grumbled.

He looked over toward the end of the couch where his portable phone was announcing its need to be answered.

Scully leaned over and picked up the cordless device. “Fox Mulder’s phone.”

Mulder noted the emphasis she put on Fox and he shook his head at her with a grin.

“Dana, I called your office but there was no answer,” Maggie’s voice came through.

Scully dismounted from Mulder’s lap and pulled her shirt closed as though that would change anything for her mother’s perspective. He made an obviously disappointed face.

“We got off early,” she explained and wiped at the edge of her mouth. “What’s up, Mom?”

“Did I catch you two at a bad time?” Maggie asked and Mulder could hear the smile in her voice through the phone and across the couch.

“No,” Scully lied and she looked over to his crotch where his erection was telling the truth. “What’s up?”

In the obedient nature that was Dana Scully, she nodded as she listened to what was obviously detailed instructions she would need to carry out on behalf of her mother. Mulder refrained from touching himself as to not be lewd while Maggie Scully was within ear-shot.

She clicked off the phone and tossed it to the other end of the couch. “We have to pick up three things the caterer forgot before dinner so, and this is my mother’s turn of phrase, we need to get a wiggle on.”

“A wiggle on? How is that a family Scully-ism I’ve never heard before?” he replied as he slowly stood up off the couch.

“My mother is full of them,” she sighed. “Get showered and changed. Apparently, this dinner is formal.”

“How formal?” Mulder asked.

It wasn’t beyond him to admit that it was strange that a man, who wore a suit and tie to work every day, would be upset at a social construct of a family dinner to dress up.

“Father McCue is coming, my brother is in his uniform and my mother told me that the staff is setting up a tent,” she reported.

“Jesus Scully, I thought life on the Vineyard was tough,” he quipped.

“I think my mother might agree with you, Mulder,” she replied and pushed him toward his bedroom door. “I’ll pick out something for you to wear tonight.”

As he began to shed the remainder of his clothing and sort it between his dry cleaning and laundry bags, he looked to the doorway where she was waiting.

A plan began to formulate in his mind. The remainder of his luggage waited for him at Scully’s apartment and it would need to be dealt with by the end of the night for things to come to fruition.

“Wouldn’t it be wild if our mothers knew each other?”

“You’re awfully chipper for a man who is going to spend the evening with my priest and my brother,” she retorted as she crossed his bedroom towards his closet and he watched as she calculated between suits he could wear. “I’m shocked, Mulder.”

“Shocked or pleasantly surprised and feeling like this side of Mulder is worthy of some lovin’?” he clarified with a leer.

“You’re an idiot,” she laughed.

His face lit up and he smiled. “Why?”

“I thought you were worthy of the lovin’ as you put it before but I appreciate that you’re trying to work for it.”

After he removed his boxers, Mulder held up his hands, standing stark naked in front of her with his semi-aroused state for them to both witness. “Can I just ask, when was the first time you considered going to bed with me? I mean earliest thought.”

Scully’s face scrunched into an adorable thoughtful expression and she bounced her head from left to right. “I told Ellen I thought you were cute.”

He was curious when this confession happened since the friends hadn’t seen much of each other over the last six years. He wasn’t sure Scully even called Ellen after her abduction or during her cancer.

“When?”

“At Trent’s birthday party before the Jersey She-Devil tried to rip your lungs out,” she replied coyly.

“That’s not the same,” he pointed out with his hands on his hips. He was trying to appear authoritative but he had no clout because he was naked. He knew that much. “Because thinking a puppy is cute is one thing but wanting to have sex-”

“Don’t say sex with a puppy, Mulder,” she cut him off.

“Would you have gone to bed with me then?”

“No,” she admitted reluctantly. “I think I was too busy trying to earn your trust at first. I thought you were cute but there was a lot working against us in the beginning.”

“So, when?”

“I think after those kids called me your ‘little wife,’ I thought about it,” she replied as she recalled the disgruntled local hooligan kids of a small Wisconsin town that were being kidnapped and drugged. “It just hadn’t occurred to me beforehand, but I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you then. Probably not until my cancer was in remission and I realized that life was too short to waste on holding back.”

Mulder made a face that she recognised.

“Why?”

“Well, going to bed out of lust I probably had thought about since our first case but we can say it was your cancer that made me realise I loved you too,” he replied and shook his head.

“What?” she asked.

There was a conversation they held with their eyes about how far they had come in such a short time yet it had taken them seven years to get to this exact place romantically. They weren’t going to waste any more time. They weren’t unsure of each other and what they wanted. This was it.

“Scully...”

She reached out to him and pulled him in close for a hug. Her face buried into his chest and she took a deep breath. “Isn’t it good that we got here at all? That we’re finally doing this?”

“I would have appreciated if we got here at the same time,” Mulder admitted.

“We could always shoot for a mutually timed orgasm,” she quipped and he laughed. “Seriously, Mulder.”

“I guess there was a side of me that had held out for hope and romance in a way you deserve,” he replied.

“I think the last few days have been a nice distraction from work and a wonderful way to open up about our feelings,” she pointed out and he nodded. “I think, knowing us, something could have easily stopped us and we would have postponed all this further.”

“So I don’t have to try at all?”

“I appreciate what you’re doing,” she encouraged as she reached between them to stroke him. He was hardening in her hand and she smiled up to him. “I just don’t want unreal expectations that could drive us apart.”

“Jesus,” he said in awe.

“Pretty self-aware of me,” she quipped as she continued to move her hand.

“Yeah,” he groaned.

“Almost like I’ve thought some things through too,” she continued.

Mulder nodded and his eyes closed. “Good... Uh that’s good.”

Scully moved her free hand up to his neck and pulled his mouth down for a kiss. Before their lips met she whispered, “Mulder?”

“Scully?” he moaned.

“We should have a shower,” she suggested and kissed him softly.

“We?” he repeated.

He was reduced to one-word sentences at this moment because her grip on his cock was slightly more than satisfying. When his eyes opened, he saw the impish look in her eyes. She was seductive and beautiful.

“A shower?” he clarified.

“A fun shower we didn’t get to have this morning.”

“We have to be at your mother’s in an hour and a half,” he reminded her.

She pulled back and pulled her shirt clear off over her head. “Grab my carry-on bag, would you? It has my lotion and I’ll need later.”

He didn’t need to be told twice but he nearly tripped on their discarded shoes as he left to find her bag in the front hall of his apartment. When he found her a few moments later, the shower was on with promising water pressure for his building given the time of day and she was humming behind the curtain.  
  
It took some control but he held back a quip asking to come aboard. The train metaphors were dead and she never appreciated a joke beaten to death. She might politely laugh the first two times but occasionally she would reach over to him, place a hand on his arm and give him a look that told him to cut it out.

His hand reached out to the curtain and pulled it open slightly as Scully was lathering her breasts, chest and stomach.

“I’m awake,” he said for himself.

Scully’s eyebrow crooked up as she tugged on his hand to bring him closer to her. “Of course, you are.”

“I want to make sure I’m not being eaten by a giant mushroom or something,” he explained.

Two fingers took a piece of his flesh between them and gave a pinch.

“Ow! Shit!” Mulder cried as he looked down at his side where a red mark was beginning to form.

“You’re not dreaming,” she stated before a girlish giggle erupted from her lips.

Mulder’s mouth formed into a tight-lipped smile and he reached behind her to pinch at her backside.

“Ow!” she cried out and slapped his hand.

“Scully, this is going to be an equal opportunity relationship,” he told her with a feigned solemn tone.

“Shut up,” she laughed and rubbed her hand along her backside. “Kiss me.”

“I’ll agree to that,” he replied and covered her mouth with his.

The kisses became fervent quickly but not as panicked as in the train phone booth or even on the compact bed they shared last night. This was a slow, exciting kiss with promises of what was to come. The frantic feelings of needing to finally be together culminated into what would be a propitious first time.

Perhaps since he was thinking of being with Scully later, it helped dampen the frenzy his hormones had worked into as she played with him earlier.

His hands went to her body and used the slickness of the water and soap to slide his palms up her chest to her breasts. She moaned as his fingers pinched at her nipples softly and she took his cock in her hand again. As his left hand continued this very important work, his right found her centre.

Their mouths parted and he watched as her face contorted into one of divine pleasure as his fingers found the exact pressure she needed him to touch her with. With every small circle he made around the small bundle of nerves, her fingers gripped onto his forearms tighter. He became her support system as his fingers made expert loops and swirls across her clit.

“Like that?” he asked tentatively.

Scully nodded quickly and pressed her pelvis further into his hand to encourage him. It appeared all she could do was to ride the wave of her ascending excitement. The pleasure she was feeling was written all over her face and covering Mulder’s fingers. He could feel her swelling against his hand and he knew it wouldn’t be much longer.

Keeping his hand on her sex, he spun her back to him and pushed her toward the wall of the shower. His cock rested between the cheeks of her ass and he spread his legs to position himself where he wanted to be. He wouldn’t enter her here. Not like this. Not with a plan to bed her properly later. He just needed to feel her slickness against his cock as she writhed against his hand. The feeling of control he had at this moment felt fleeting when she began to grind her backside into his dick.

Usually, it took more to get him to a place where he might think he could come. With Dana Scully naked, soapy and moaning in his hands, he felt he could release at any moment.

All he needed was more friction and his hips began to move of their own volition.

The head of his cock brushed against his fingers and he could feel himself just at her entrance. God, he needed to push inside but they agreed to wait.

This was just supposed to be a shower to tide them over until tonight. This wasn’t supposed to be the moment they finally made love. This was fucking and not what she deserved.

“That feels good,” Scully sighed as she reached up behind her to touch his neck. “You feel so good there.”

“I want you so badly,” he moaned and his hips continued to thrust against her.

“I know...” She sounded equally frustrated.

“Should I stop this?” he asked as his middle finger continued to circle her clit.

“God please don’t stop!”

Her eyes met his as she looked over her shoulder. The lack of control she felt was showcased to him. He could feel her resolve breaking.

“I can’t wait to be inside you, Scully,” he whispered. “You want that too. I can feel it.”

Scully nodded. “Yes.”

His cock continued to brush against her swollen lips as he manipulated her body like a skilled cellist. She was an instrument singing for him as she began to twist and push on the walls.

“Oh my god!” she cried out. “Oh my... God!”

Her knees buckled and Mulder moved his hand from her breast to around her waist to keep her standing as her orgasm moved through her. He felt his own undoing fast approaching. The pressure of her lips on his cock with each thrust pushed him to the edge. Her slickness coated his dick and he moved his hand to push against her to feel the release of ecstasy.

“Fuck,” he growled, tightening his hold around her middle to keep them both upright. He thrust against her one last time. He felt himself emptying out and throbbing as he came on her leg and the shower wall. “Scully...”

They were panting hard as the water began to wash away the evidence of his release. Her fingers found his hand to interlace with as he continued to grip at her torso. He could feel himself twitching and the blood retracting as his cock went from it’s hardened state to semi-aroused.

She looked over her shoulder up to him again. “Good thing we have the weekend off.”

His mouth crooked up in a smile. “Why?”

“I’m going to need to recover after the first time if almost doing it is that intense,” she admitted.

Mulder kissed her shoulder. He was definitely feeling the love in his bathroom right now. He grabbed the soap with his free hand to lather up her torso. “I don’t want to jinx us by saying I’m happy but I’m feeling fairly happy at this moment.”

Scully patted his face. “Well, that’s something.”

He released her when he felt she could stand and put his head under the stream of the water. His hand moved down his face and he reached for the shampoo. “I have time for a wash and a rinse?”

“As long as you can air dry in the car,” she replied as she moved to get out of the shower. “I’ll get dressed and wait for you in the living room.”

“Make yourself at home,” he called after her.

“I would but you don’t have anything to eat here,” she called back.

  
****  
  
He pulled at the collar on his crisp white shirt and thumbed at the button under the double knot of his cranberry coloured tie. The monogram on the pocket of his shirt was stitched on by hand and he recalled mandatory attendance parties during his summers off from Oxford.

When he opened the box containing this and three others, he thought it was an insensitive and thoughtless gift from his mother. A man who chased down slime monsters couldn’t possibly wear an inscribed shirt to a small town police department with his vocabulary and not prove himself to be a complete asshole. He had to draw the line somewhere.

Earlier tonight when Scully saw the shirt in a dry cleaning bag at the back of his closet, she pulled it out, held it up under one of his best black suits he didn’t wear on the road and nodded once.

“This?” he asked.

“If you don’t mind a woman’s input-”

“Scully I will take all kinds of input from you,” he assured her. “I’m not at all attached to anything you crinkle your nose at when you think I’m not looking.”

When they arrived at her place, he had the pleasure of watching Scully slightly curl her hair and put on a bit more make-up than she wore to the office. Mulder didn’t know this side of her that primped and spent time studying her appearance, not that he minded. Immediately he remembered all the wonderful things he had learned about Scully over the last few days. Underestimating her would be a mistake.

When she emerged from the bedroom, carrying her heels and holding the back of her dress up with one hand he felt his resolve breaking away. For all the cotillions and formal events he attended as a young man, he knew when to appreciate a dress and when the pieces were put together properly.

It was a white semi-formal dress with a black lace overlay covering the torso and sweetheart top. The skirt cinched at her waist and, although the solid material under the overlay was slightly low cut, the lace material rounded at her neck and covered her arms with a cap sleeve that was flattering on Scully.

She looked like a vision and he told her so. She looked down at her stocking feet and up to him with a blush. It reminded him of the embarrassment she felt when he brought her flowers at oncology. He wouldn’t make a joke now to make her laugh. He wanted her to feel beautiful and special because she was to him.

“I need help with the back,” she said finally and turned around.

Unnecessarily, she held the back of her hair out of the way and Mulder slid his hands up the lace garment to attach a small hook and eye clasp for the white bodice. He looped a small button at the top to keep the lace overlay around her neck. Mulder felt his fingers awkwardly attach the enclosure and he tugged on the zipper at the middle of her back to ensure it was up all the way.

Scully turned to face him and set her shoes on the floor before reaching out to use him to step into the black heels. “Ready?”

“What did your mother need us to pick up on the way over?” he asked.

“We have to stop at the liquor store and get non-alcoholic beer for one of the guests,” she replied. “And pick up Charlie from the airport.”

“Charlie?” Mulder repeated.

He could see her calculating in her mind a decision.

“I think I will bring a jacket,” she stated and crossed her apartment to retrieve a double-breasted jacket Mulder hadn’t seen her in before.

“Scully?”

She looked up at him and recognised his expression. “Yeah. Charlie.”

“I thought he was a myth,” Mulder teased.

“If he shows up tonight he won’t be,” Scully replied and he gave her another questioning look. “He has a habit of not showing to things last minute. Always with the excuses and almost flightier than Mel-”

Scully stopped herself from saying a bad word about her passed-sister but he knew that’s what she was going to say.

“Shall we?”

Mulder kissed her forehead softly. “Lets.”

After waiting thirty minutes at the pick up station at Dulles and recieving a phone call from Charlie that something came up for work, Mulder and Scully headed over to her mother’s house. The look of disappointment on her face wasn’t lost on him and he promised himself not to make her ever look like that.

An hour later, they were parked in front of the home of Maggie Scully. Two young men stood at a valet booth with a radio on and a walkie talkie at their hips. A tent was set up on the side yard of the house leading to the back and white twinkle lights decorated each tree.

Soft music could be heard from the tent and staff were calling to one another. Mulder and Scully were some of the first to arrive and the valet knocked on his window with an overly friendly smile meant for customer service.

“Are you here for the Scully engagement?” the young man asked when Mulder rolled down his window.

Mulder nodded. “She’s the daughter. I’m the date.”

“I’ll let Mrs. Scully know you’re here,” the young man said and opened the door for Mulder.

Another valet opened Scully’s and offered a hand to help her out.

As his car drove off down the street and Mulder stood holding a case of non-alcoholic beer, he turned to Scully. “Seriously. Is someone getting married?”

She laughed. “Bill was awarded the Navy Cross.”

“What happened?” he asked, knowing that these honours were reserved for men who fought in combat.

“There were some problems on his last deployment,” she said lightly. “I’m sure Bill will tell the story a few hundred times tonight. He might be insufferable.”

Mulder looked up at the house in front of him. “You’re worth it.”


	7. Chapter 7

Twinkling white lights adorned the inside of the tent to illuminate the tables and dance floor. A big band was setting up their equipment along the far back wall near an exit to where catering services were running in and out. Round tables that seated ten with dark brown chiavari chairs were being set up along the outside of the tent with white cushions hurriedly tied onto the seats.

Maggie Scully was easily spotted in a floor-length green dress with a beading overlay and a half sleeve. It was elegant and Scully appreciated the gathered material at her side. It was fitting for a woman who would be hosting a military event such as this evening. Maggie was conversing with a woman in a white blazer. The topic must have been serious as she stood with her arms crossed and a slight frown on her face.

Mulder brushed his hand along Scully’s lower back and she reached behind her to interlace her fingers with his. A look of panic crossed his face that might only be discernable to her but it was there.

“Relax,” she whispered and Mulder nodded but the look of panic was still there. She had to laugh. “Okay then don’t relax but we should go see if my mother needs anything else.”

“Scully-” Mulder started and then she caught the pained look on his face.

“Are you nervous?” she asked and tried to fight a smile.

Nervous Mulder was cute.

Mulder swallowed. “What if they can tell?”

Scully was confused. “What if they can tell what? About us?”

“Yeah,” he nodded anxiously.

Scully’s eyes widened as she understood his meaning. “About us earlier?”

Mulder nodded as he watched Maggie and the caterer continue to point and chat.

Scully reached up and wiped at the edge of his mouth. “I think I got the shower sex off your face.”

Mulder smirked. “You’re funny.”

“Thanks for noticing,” she mumbled and took his hand to lead him over to her mother.

“Dana! Thank goodness you’re here,” Maggie sighed when she spotted them approaching. “And Fox! I’m glad you could make it.”

“Mrs. Scully I’m going to check on the food,” the woman in the blazer announced before she dashed off with her clipboard in hand.

Mulder nodded anxiously and Scully squeezed his hand.

“Mulder is feeling a little anxious about Bill,” Scully explained as she caught her mother’s expression.

“Who would blame me? Last time we saw each other wasn’t the most pleasant,” he grumbled and forced a smile. “I’ll be on my best behaviour, though, Mrs. Scully. I’m still counting on that excuse-Mulder-from-work note from you for future reference.”

Maggie laughed. “I don’t think with Bill’s commanding officers, his wife and his mother around he would try to get into a fist fight with you.”

Scully patted Mulder’s arm but he continued to look around and study the exits. She recognized his eyes checking and calculating steps toward each opening in the tent.

“Mom, what can we do?” Scully offered.

“Oh, you can relax. I was just glad you could make it. The only thing left for me to do is a double check on the menu for tonight,” Maggie said and she gave Scully a look. “Tara told me this morning she’s a vegetarian.”

“Why?” Mulder blurted out and Scully gave him a nudge.

Maggie held up her hands. “I don’t know. We changed it from a roast beef to free range chicken or ocean fresh fish. I didn’t know there was any other kind.”

Scully gave her mom an apologetic look and watched as she rushed off to complete the final details. This was quite the party but standard for what the Scully family was used to. They might have grown up on naval base housing but Maggie Scully was not from a pauper’s home. The kids grew up appreciating a budget for the reason that William Scully Sr. despised the spoiled nature of the life Maggie Scully left behind when she married a naval captain. When it suited Ahab, he would allow the family to indulge in opulence and frivolity with ski vacations, a college education trust for each child and a new car every five years.

It wasn’t the same kind of money that Mulder grew up with. There weren’t societal expectations for the Scully kids to attend cotillions, inter-marry among other wealthy families and it had never occurred to Margaret and Ahab that they should do things any different from the honest, Catholic and loving way they raised their children. ‘A firm hand and a warm hug’ was the Scully parental motto.

Scully suspected that Fox Mulder stopped being hugged by his father when he turned ten and had witnessed his mother behave cold and distant with him. The man was so overly tactile it seemed an odd juxtaposition that he would come from a family of cold people who lacked affection. It was even more strange that he was drawn to her, who had been told on more than one occasion that she needed to show her affections to those she loved instead of keeping herself closed off.

“Mulder, have you seen all of my mother’s house?” Scully offered as she slipped her hand in his.

Mulder looked around the tented area and shook his head.

“Come on,” she prompted. “I’ll give you the ten cent tour.”

  
***

It was an hour and twenty-five minutes in Thursday night traffic that lulled Scully into a peaceful vehicular slumber. When she awoke as Mulder was kissing her forehead, her mind immediately contemplated and tried to place their location. She didn’t recognize their surroundings and her mind was too foggy from sleep to guestimate at their location based on travel time.

They were parked in front of a white loft cabin with a red door and black shutters. To the left of the house was the Chesapeake Bay and twinkling lights could be seen along the shoreline. A warm breeze and the sound of the water lapping at the shore could be heard through Mulder’s open car window.

When she sat up in her seat to yawn and stretch, some things had fallen into place in her mind. However, she still needed to clarify with Mulder because that’s what they did.

“Mulder, where are we?” she asked.

“Kent Island,” he stated and looked at her with a hunger and longing that would have made her knees weak if she hadn’t been sitting down. “We have the cabin for the weekend until Sunday afternoon. And before you say I didn’t need to go to all this trouble to get you into bed, maybe you should take a look around the place first.”

She smiled and felt a flush creeping up on her cheeks. “Okay. As a scientist, it would be unwise to jump to a conclusion without examining all the evidence in hand.”

“That’s my-” he paused when he caught the raised eyebrow. “Lady-partner?”

“It’s a late hour so I’ll give you a pass on the turn of phrase,” she replied and they shared a laugh.

She yawned again and turned her face to study the exterior of the house again.

“Shall we?” Mulder prompted but he left the key in the ignition as though she might back out at the last minute.

She pulled the key from its slot and dropped the keys into Mulder’s palm. “We shall.”

She maneuvered herself out of the car a little slower than he did. Her body was quite tired from the long day of travelling, the wine she drank at Bill’s party and the energy she needed to expel to smile tightly as Mulder and Bill made not-so-nice small talk.

When he joined her at her side in front of the car, she noticed he was holding their luggage.

“What did you do?” she asked softly.

“I packed for us to go away for the weekend,” he replied. Her face must have shown its confusion and shock. He laughed softly. “I put some things in an overnight bag for you while you were primping. Mine was easy to do while you were putting that lotion on after our fun shower.”

She had to appreciate the excitement in his voice when discussing his plot to get her out to Kent Island. Normally he reserved this kind of display of elation when discussing a potential case. Romantic Mulder was adorable.

“I thought it was strange a voyeur such as yourself wasn’t interested in watching me do that,” she teased him with a nudge.

“Oh trust me, that was a tough call to make but it was all part of this plan,” he said as they walked towards the house.

The sound of their dress shoes crunched on the tightly packed gravel of the driveway and she could smell vanilla and cinnamon wafting from inside.

Mulder’s free hand left her lower back and she watched as he lifted the welcome mat in search of the key left for him.

“Under the welcome mat?” she asked. “That’s not cliche?”

“They said they would leave the keys by the front door,” Mulder replied and his mouth scrunched to the side when his search came up empty.

Scully tapped on his shoulder and pointed to the bullfrog garden accessory that was clearly out of place next to the sparsely decorated front porch. At least the owners had thought to leave the front light on for them.

“Nice eye, Agent,” Mulder quipped. He reached into the mouth of the figurine and pulled them out. “Jeremiah didn’t disappoint.”

“I hate that you talked me into singing,” she muttered as he used the key to unlock the front door. “Or that I chose that song.”

“Why?” he asked. “I was in shock already. Your vocal talents couldn’t have done any damage.”

Scully shook her head. Funny guy.

“Want me to carry you over the threshold?” Mulder offered as he pushed the door open.

“You should save your strength,” she quipped back and stepped past him into the house.

Inside the front hallway to the immediate left was a small sitting area and behind that was the dining area. In front of Scully was a stairway leading up to the top floor and beyond that was the fully stocked kitchen with seating at the bar and a welcome basket next to the sink.

Mulder stepped into the hall beside her and set their bags by the small bench at the entrance. She looked around the pristine floors and took note to remove her shoes. Before she went exploring, she looked down to Mulder’s shiny loafers pointedly and hung her jacket on the coat rack over the bench.

As Scully was noting to herself the warm temperature of the house, she turned around to see Mulder shedding his suit jacket and loosening his tie. His shirt sleeves would be next to turn up and he would look like the dishevelled Mulder that filled her fantasies for years. He didn’t quite have the five o’clock shadow to complete this look but normally she wasn’t in such fancy attire when she had imagined him in less than a partnerly fashion.

If she was being honest with herself and Mulder, she had thought about them in a sexual situation more than a time or two. The more logical side of her brain that understood what it would do to their working relationship knew not to act on those feelings. It made for some frustrating evenings because her heart wasn’t ready for that with her hormones protesting against every counter-argument her body came up with. The close calls over the years between them were their hormones trying to win control.

In the last two years alone, they had battled many obstacles. Her cancer and a long road to recover before discovering her infertility. Immediately after that, they found and lost Emily. They lost the X-Files, they almost lost their partnership which led to a near kiss in his hallway. It put a spotlight on some major trust issues. After all that and some more, finally her heart felt ready. Most couples didn’t have their history and emotional baggage but then again, most couples didn’t have to deal with alien conspiracies, kidnappings, murders in the family and infertility before a first kiss.

Maybe having such a spotty start to things helped them build a solid foundation for where they found themselves at this moment.

What surprised her was that Mulder had planned a weekend away for them to have something special. Scully looked around the house with its beautiful New England decor, the view of the bay beyond the double patio doors and secluded enough location that work couldn’t interrupt.

When she looked up from the note card welcoming “Dana and Fox” to their bungalow hideaway weekend, she caught Mulder watching her. The look of desire on his face was overwhelming and arousing.

“Mulder,” she started but her breath caught in her throat.

“It’s late,” he commented but it was more a question if it was too late in the evening for them.

She set the card down and brushed her hands along the countertop. She shook her head, studying the pattern in the granite. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s not conditional on the items I packed for you?” he asked.

Scully smirked. “If you did forget anything, you might be sent out shopping in the morning.”

“Even if I only packed you a toothbrush?” he asked as he approached her.

A flush filled her neck and cheeks. “I think that bag had a little more weight to it than just a toothbrush.”

Mulder made a disappointed face and they shared a smile. It was good to break the ice with some humour. Her nerves were beginning to work their way up and if she had any more time to contemplate this, she might run. It didn’t make sense for her to feel this urge to run or hide but intimacy and Dana Scully didn’t always mesh well, especially after the times she had been burned romantically. Opening herself up and being vulnerable had only backfired on her in the past except with Mulder. He was the only person who had never used her vulnerabilities against her and as they stood on the threshold of a sexual relationship, she knew she couldn’t be on the fence anymore.

Mulder closed the gap between them and turned her to face him. He kissed her forehead and rubbed his hands up her back.

“I really love this dress,” he commented. His voice was low and there was an evident hardness pressing into her belly.

She looked up at him as she let out a calming breath. “I can tell it’s really working for you, Mulder.”

“You know,” he started. “That part of me has a mind of its own-”

They both laughed.

“But its status right now has more to do with an emotional response to where we are than a physical promise we might make later,” he said. “You’re not ‘just’ going to be a weekend or someone I work with, Scully. You’re not ‘just’ anything. ”

That seemed to be the pledge she needed and she pulled on his neck to bring his face closer to hers. She kissed him solidly on the lips with her tongue seeking entrance to his mouth. As his lips parted and his hands moved down to the flesh of her ass, Mulder returned the passion she was expressing in kind.

It was remarkable how quickly her body responded to his. A kiss from Mulder turned her on physically and emotionally. His hands on her body excited her because he knew her inside and out. What was next in their relationship was the final act between two people who had overcome every hurdle and obstacle life could throw at them.

It didn’t hurt her arousal that he kissed her exactly the way she liked to be kissed either. He had soft lips, a skilled tongue and his hands always found a way to touch her in new places. He was strong and aggressive but gentle and sweet. He put so much passion into a kiss, she could only imagine how it would feel to have him inside of her.

Reluctantly, she pushed her hands on his chest and his mouth moved from her lips to her neck. He was good at that too. Each kiss, lick and nibble at her skin went straight to her centre. If he kept up his pattern, she might come in that kitchen while they were both fully dressed.

“Mulder,” she started. “Oh god, um.… We should...”

“Yes?” he asked against her skin. The stubble on his cheeks was causing a nice abrasive tingling sensation and his hand slipped under the hem of her skirt up her thighs. “You were saying?”

His hand stopped when he felt the edge of her thigh high stockings.

“Miss Scully,” he said in feigned shock. “Thigh highs to a military event?”

Her eyes closed as both hands were now under the skirt of her dress and touching at the expanse of skin not covered by her silky hosiery. His fingers brushed at the edges of the lace garters then up to the bikini lace panties.

“Is this a matching set?” he asked and she nodded. “Oh, you’re cruel.”

“It’s not cruel if you get to see it,” she reminded him. Her eyes opened and they shared a look of knowing. “Take me to bed, Mulder.”

  
***

It was a slow and unsteady walk up the stairs to the loft bedroom where another sitting area, king sized bed, bathroom and balcony overlooking the bay awaited them. Mulder set their luggage on the coffee table and placed his suit jacket over the back of the deep armchair. He took her hand to lead her toward the balcony.

Across the water were the lights they could see from downstairs but also a greater view of Crab Alley Bay. Osprey, great blue heron and bald eagles would be circling the skies in the morning for their meals of fish, shellfish and crab. If you swam in the wrong places of the Chesapeake, you might see a shark or a stingray but in their inlet of the bay, it was calm and tranquil. If a fisherman was lucky, a stray sturgeon might find its way to his reel but that would have to be pretty lucky in their area.

What Scully remembered about Kent Island from school history was the approximate size just over thirty-one square miles and its deep yet problematic history with Maryland. In the early 1600s, there was an issue over different colonies laying claim to the land while Matapeake, Ozinie and Monoponson tribes were the original inhabitants that were long forgotten. In the recent months, a number of Washington lobbyists and politicians took to relaxing there each weekend as an escape from the grind of the bustling metropolis.

If the government paid a little more, she might invest in a property on Kent Island as well. It was idyllic and serene.

Mulder rubbed his hands up her arms as he stood behind her and placed a soft kiss on her neck.

“It’s breathtaking out here,” she noted and he hummed in agreement. “How did you find out about this place?”

“I read a few ads on the train,” he said simply. “You’d be amazed at how easy it is to book a place like this while you’re powdering your nose.”

“This isn’t some family property or part of the Mulder family history?” she asked as she leaned into his touch. “Somewhere you’ve been before?”

“I wouldn’t want any part of my past as a child or a young adult to be part of this,” he said as he stood up and wrapped his arms around her waist. “You deserve a fresh start.”

“Is that what this is?” she asked as she turned to face him in his arms.

“Fresh start, a new beginning or whatever it is when you want something good to finally happen with someone who’s experienced a lot of bad things because of you,” he said.

His eyes looked regretful for bringing her any pain except he was the one that acted as the balm to every ailment. Why didn’t he understand that by now? Probably because she hadn’t told him.

Scully put her hand on his cheek and softened her eyes as she tried to find the words to express what she struggled to say. “Mulder...”

He kissed her softly and hugged her to him. “I’m kind of amazed we got here at all.”

“I can’t be up on a pedestal,” she whispered into his chest.

They shared a look and his confusion was evident.

“You still see me, right?” she asked. “Not some version of a woman you think I might be?”

“Scully I see you,” he insisted. “I see everything that’s been done to you-”

“Don’t-”

“No, just hold on,” he cut her off and she frowned. “I told you how I felt. I told you what I want. I want this and us. And as awkwardly as I’m trying to express it, I just want you to know I appreciate that you’re even here with me.”

“Is there ever going to be a time when you don’t blame yourself for what’s happened?” she asked. “Is survivor’s guilt part of your emotional baggage?”

Mulder stepped back and extended his right hand to her. “Hi, I’m Fox Mulder. You may have heard of me at the academy because my familiy was the centre of a government conspiracy and by the way I’m the reason your sister is dead and you can’t have babies.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” she cried.

Mulder held his hands up. “What?”

“You’re not the reason for any of those things!” she cried. “Do we really need to get into who and what is responsible for what’s happened? Not just to me but other women? I’m not your victim.”

Mulder shook his head. “You still had this happen because of me.”

“You’re really that self-centred?” she countered.

“Wouldn’t it be more flippant to think I wasn’t somehow responsible for at least some of what’s happened in your life?” he shot back.

“Mulder!”

It was a declaration with a tone of ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ mixed with ‘you’re an idiot.’ It was a ‘Mulder’ he had heard from her many times before. When he was insisting what he saw in a blurry photograph was more than a trick of light or she tried to plead with him that a trip across the country on a four am flight was unneccessary. She knew he could tell that from her tone because he stepped back and rolled his eyes.

“I’m serious,” she stated.

“I was being serious too.”

She sighed. “I’m not holding you responsible for what’s happened. You can let yourself off the hook if that’s whatever this is.”

She folded her arms across her chest and she took a step back from him. This was the part of her that felt frustration when it came to emotional barriers breaking down. The messiness involved in a personal relationship with another person never seemed worth it. She had enough going on in her life with Mulder without things feeling more convoluted by sex.

“God dammit, Scully I’m not here out of some misplaced guilt!” he cried in frustration. “I just worried you might be.”

“If you really think that, you really know nothing about women or specifically me,” she started as she put her hands on her hips. “Are you really that much of a self-centred ass?”

“We both know I am!” he declared. Mulder took a few steps back and sat on the armrest of the chair near them. His hands rubbed up and down his face in that way when he was truly frustrated with the direction an argument between them was going. “Did I wreck the mood?”

She smiled sadly. “Actually no. I just forgot for a moment that you might have some hang ups.”

Mulder extended his hand again. “Hi there. Fox Mulder.”

She couldn’t help but laugh and she put her hand in his. “Dana Scully.”

“I like sunflower seeds, spray painting X’s on random Oregon roads and uncovering conspiracies tied to my fucked up family,” he said as though that was an attractive introduction to himself. He said it with the same smile he had on his face when she walked into his office. “I think I saw you naked on an alien ship and in a decontamination shower once.”

Scully’s eyebrows shot up and she fought back a smile. “Oh did you?”

Mulder nodded. “It was huge.”

Scully opened her mouth but quickly closed it and shook her head. She laughed a little. “Was it?”

“The ship,” he said quickly and they laughed again. “I meant the ship. The shower was... well less than sexy. Too many people watching.”

“I’ve had better showers since then,” she noted in reference the one they shared that afternoon.

Mulder pulled her closer in between his knees and he wrapped his arms around her waist as he pushed his face into her chest. “I think you’re the only person on this planet I like.”

Scully ran her fingers through his hair. It was probably true. The man believed in humanity and wanted to save everyone but people were so apt to let him down.

Mulder’s hands pulled on the skirt of her dress and lifted it up so he could see the full view of her lacy underpants and he looked up to her. “If this was all I ever saw for the rest of my life as a man, I still would hesitate to blink.”

Scully rolled her eyes and attempted to step away but Mulder caught her wrist.

“I mean it, I would look at that over an alien space ship any day,” he promised.

“You’ve seen one from the inside,” she countered and his eyes lit up at the innuendo. “That being said...”

“Yes?” Mulder prompted.

“You’re my favourite person on this planet too,” she said shyly.

Mulder’s hands didn’t stop rubbing against her backside. “But not the only person you like.”

“That’s true,” she noted.

“I’ve been called a lot of things,” he said.

“I wouldn’t call you those things,” she replied softly. He had been labelled Spooky Mulder, paranoid and antisocial by his peers but small minds tend to label a person without a second thought. “You tend to get a little scruffy towards people. You have such a strong faith in saving humanity but your hopes get dashed so easily.”

Mulder shrugged. “Have a few family conspiracies and you tend to get a little scruffy around the edges.”

Scully kissed the top of his head. “I like scruffy.”

“Bonus for me,” Mulder whispered as he pulled her skirt up around her waist. “I swear to God Scully, looking this good this should be illegal.”

She pushed his hands down and turned her back to him. “Get the back would you?”

Mulder’s fingers worked at the zipper, clasps and buttons at the back of her dress. When she turned around, her fingers went to the knot on his tie and loosened it further.

“I think I had a dream like this once,” he said as she pulled her arms out of the sleeves of her dress.

“How did it end, Mulder?” she asked as the dress dropped to her feet. She watched his face as she stepped to the side and picked up the garment from the floor. “Did it end with me worrying about wrecking the lines of a $300 gown?”

Mulder took the dress from her hands and dutifully hung it in the closet. The thoughtful act alone turned her on. He turned to her with his hands on his hips and shook his head.

“I can’t believe I left you while you’re wearing that to hang up a dress,” he commented as he walked towards her near the bed.

Scully looked down to the strapless bra, lace underpants and thigh high stockings she had put on and realized that compared to the other states of undress Mulder had seen her in, this probably was by far the most sensual she had ever looked.

Of course, over the last few days they had experienced the full Monty and from Scully’s point of view, it had all been wonderful and delicious. For the visually stimulated side of Mulder that appreciated XXX magazines and video tapes, Scully understood where he was coming from.

“I think you’re a little overdressed,” she pointed out as she approached him. “I kind of like that.”

Mulder smirked as he worked on the buttons on the cuff of each sleeve. “I kind of like it too.”

Scully stepped closer to him and put her hands on his chest. “A much better memory than alien goo?”

“As un-sexy as that moment was, Scully, I hate to admit that there were parts of that evening that got me through some hard times,” he admitted with a smile and she shook her head at him. “You disapprove?”

“I don’t,” she admitted. “A heroic rescue to Antarctica outweighs any non-sanctioned self-gratifying appointments you might have had afterward.”

“It filled out the picture I already had in my head,” he replied and she understood.

Over the years they had seen one another in various states of undress. If she had a dollar for every time she had seen Mulder in his underwear, she could pay off the suede jacket she bought last summer on a whim. Even on sale, it wasn’t cheap. As for what Mulder had seen over the last seven years besides the alien ship and the decontamination shower, she had caught him numerous times looking down the crease of her blouse, at the skin exposed when she shed her jacket or along her belly if her shirt rose up. She ignored a lot of these glances because she was aware he was a visual man and they were either tired, hungry or forced into too many cramped situations.

“These last few days have kind of blown any glimpses over the last seven years out of the water,” Mulder stated and she nodded in agreement.

He kissed her softly and she felt the sweet intent of a man who professed his long-burning love many times that week. For all the longing looks and the active choices to pick each other over any alternates, there was also the trust and friendship they had built.

“You’re shaking,” Mulder noted.

Scully looked down at her trembling hands. “I’m not cold.”

“Nervous?” he asked as his hands cupped her backside.

“I think there’s a little bit of nerves,” she admitted. “However, I’m not running away.”

Mulder raised his eyebrows and he gave an appreciative glance to her. “In that?”

“That would be silly,” she admitted and they both nodded. “Maybe you could kiss me again. That seemed to help my nerves.”

Mulder touched his lips to her and the sweet kiss of promise turned heated and fervid. His hands squeezed at her backside and she felt him press himself into her. She had wanted him for so long and this was finally happening. She wanted to feel him moving inside of her while the length of his body surrounded her.

Her hormones were rushing her emotions and her emotions didn’t mind one bit. This was where she wanted to be and she loved him. She was ready. She admitted she loved him earlier that week and she wanted to share this last act with him.

She thread her fingers into his hair and held his face to hers as the kiss built. She felt herself grow increasingly wet from the sensations. It was a strange feeling to be so hyper-aware of her own arousal building but perhaps her mind was trying to catalogue every reaction and emotion. Her psyche was attempting to remember every detail, every touch, each moan he emitted and how this moment finally came to pass. They were going to make love tonight and as much as her mind retracted from such statements in the past, no other term would suit what they were preparing to do.

A first time for them, after all they had been through together, would never be fucking. It wouldn’t be just sex or a carnal act in of itself. Her subconscience was reminding her this was a big deal. She walked away from professions of ‘I love you’ with an ‘Oh, brother’ but this was it.

Her belly contracted as his fingers slipped into the back of her panties. His fingers kneaded the bare flesh and his thumbs pushed the material of her underpants down her hips.

The polite thing to do might be to help him in his task but she was too busy working on his belt. The primal desire was taking over. She couldn’t stop kissing him. If she had kissed Mulder as a young woman, she wouldn’t have the build up of the last seven years to put into each taste of his mouth. What she learned over the last seven years of bantering, discussions and arguments was that it was one hell of a kind of foreplay for this moment.

It wasn’t just the way his tongue felt against hers and his hands on her body. This was fuelled with each risk of his life to save her. Every moment he told her she was the only one he trusted. Each time he chased down a monster disguised as a man and shouted her name. The kiss was him telling her he couldn’t do it alone as she threatened to leave the FBI and ultimately him because without their work and him by her side, the badge wasn’t worth it. The kiss had a precursor to standing at the Washington monument and vowing to stay with him no matter what crummy detail the FBI put them on because he was worth it.

His fingers slipped under the clasp of her strapless bra and suddenly the material was loose around her torso. The only thing holding the undergarment to her chest now was the pressure from Mulder’s abdomen. He was holding her so fiercely and his fingers were pressing into her back that she knew there might be marks tomorrow. She didn’t care.

The last time she spent a night with a man and didn’t care about the consequences, she was on the precipice of a disease that would threaten her life.

Tonight, she looked forward to a future and possibilities with Mulder.

“Scully,” Mulder moaned as he kissed along her jawline and down her neck.

She had yet to remove his shirt and she felt naked and wanton. His belt was in her hands and his cock was straining against his pants. She felt a flush on her cheeks and if there was ever a moment to think logically, this was not it. She just wanted to get him inside of her and feel whole. She wanted to stretch for him and watch as he pushed into her.

To get to that part, they needed to get into a bed. Her logical brain was aware of at least that much.

“Mulder,” she sighed as his teeth grazed at that spot on her neck that went straight to her centre.

“Hmm?” he asked as his fingers pushed her panties further down her hips.

“The... Oh god... Um... the bed?” she managed.

Mulder pulled his mouth off her clavicle and looked into her eyes. There was a knowing look on his face that this was it and he appeared slightly panicked.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

“No,” he lied.

“I am,” she said.

“Me too,” he replied with a smile. “How do you do that?”

She smiled but she was confused at his question. “Do what?”

“How do you stay so honest?” he asked. “You keep me honest with all of it but how do you do it?”

“I can’t keep track of a lie,” she answered genuinely.

“It’s intoxicating and a little infuriating,” he told her and she nodded. “I like it a lot, though.”

She didn’t want to answer him. They took a moment to account for the brevity of what they were about to do. Mulder’s hands rubbed up her back as her hands held his waist.

“I don’t know how to walk you over to the bed over there,” Mulder admitted after a beat.

Scully took the strapless bra from between them and tossed it on the nearby chair. She stepped back from his body and pushed her panties the rest of the way down her hips. With a slow hand, she took his in hers and walked naked back toward the bed.

“I’m not in a mushroom on Brown Mountain,” he said out loud.

She stood at the edge of the bed and shook her head to tell him no.

“We’re doing this.”

Scully nodded and she reached to his open belt. “I’ve been pushing you away a lot the last year and a half, Mulder. I think this week has kind of reminded me why I was afraid of going forward.”

Mulder looked down as she undid the zipper on his belt and pushed his trousers down to fall at his feet.

“I was afraid of this kind of passion taking over my life,” she admitted. “After all we’ve been through, I think I learned to trust myself to know it wouldn’t impede our work.”

“And now?” he asked in a strained voice.

“I’m willing to risk it, even though I know it won’t,” she replied.

Mulder stepped out of his suit pants and she looked up to him before standing up with the garment in her hands. She set the pants on the bench at the end of the bed. Her fingers found the buttons on his shirt.

“I thought if we got to this moment it would be you confessing your heart to convince me I was ready,” she started.

“Do you need me to convince you?” he asked.

The sound of his voice was a deep baritone that was laden with arousal. It made her shiver a little to hear his desire so blatantly in his words.

Scully undid the buttons slowly on his shirt. “I don’t need it.”

“I could tell you I love you again,” he offered and she nodded. “I do love you.”

“I know,” she said with a secretive smile. “I’ve known for a while.”

“When?” he asked as she pushed the shirt down his arms.

She looked up at him as she placed the shirt on his pants and tried not to laugh. “I had a feeling at the Cher concert. I felt the thing that wasn’t your pen light poking into me and remembered that thing can act on feelings that aren’t just sexual.”

Mulder nodded. “I think the ratio of those with us has been a sixty-forty split.”

Scully made a face like she didn’t believe him.

“Thirty-seventy?” he guessed.

“What sexual situations have we had that would cause that reaction?” she asked as her fingers looped into the waist of his boxer shorts.

“You might have noticed I’m a-” Mulder started and his voice caught as his boxers fell to his feet. He cleared his throat as she took his cock in her hand and stroked once. “I’m a man.”

“God help you,” she said with a giggle.

“My mind puts sex on a lot of things it shouldn’t,” he tried to explain. “Not just these overtly sexual situations but it could be as simple as you bending over to pick up something off the desk and I see the curve of your ass.”

“Mulder you’re not that basic,” she admonished.

“I might not be but my dick is,” he stated and his hand covered hers. “Get on the bed.”

Scully regretfully released his member and sat on the bed. As she moved back toward the middle, Mulder climbed on top of her and kissed her softly. His tongue met hers and her head fell back on the bed as the kiss deepened to something of promise toward lust.

As she held his head in her hands, he lowered his weight onto his elbows. His body met with hers as he settled himself between her thighs. She felt a rush as his cock brushed against her thigh.

Mulder reached between them and took his hardened flesh in his hands. Things felt as if they were moving in slow motion as he brushed the swollen head against her folds.

“Do you want me to-” he started and they looked between their bodies as the tip of his dick slipped inside. “Fuck.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she whispered.

Mulder’s hips moved forward slightly and his shaft inched inside further. Without much foreplay or preamble, she was wet and ready. There was a pang and ache as he stretched her sex. It was a most welcomed discomfort. She winced as the head of his cock brushed against her cervix and he stalled his hips.

“Stop?” he asked and the look of worry on his face was endearing.

“It’s okay. It’s a good hurt,” she promised and shook her head. “Just kiss me a little more.”

Mulder obliged and his mouth met hers again. His hips remained still as her body relaxed and she pushed her pelvis towards his. The last remaining inch of his length slid inside. The head of his cock pushed against her and they groaned in unison.

“Jesus Christ and all fuck,” he moaned and she watched as his resolve threatened to dwindle. “Fuck! You’re tight.”

Scully swallowed and tried to force her muscles to relax but that was a useless exercise. Her body would relax and stretch only slightly but she couldn’t change her anatomy any more than he could change his.

He seemed to find some resolve because he pushed himself up and sat back on his haunches as his arousal remained inside of her. She studied his muscular chest, the lines down the side of his abdominal muscles to imply definition and toward the V to where his cock was buried inside her. She looked up her own body from the way her hip bones stuck out just slightly in this position up to her breasts that were aching for his touch.

Mulder rubbed his slightly calloused palms up the smooth skin on her thighs and across her belly. “I like looking at you.”

It was strange he could say something so sweet and innocent while his cock twitched inside of her, ready to move.

Scully smiled a little. “This isn’t a bad view from down here either.”

His hand was travelling up her abdomen but retreated to his own chest to rub his palm across the muscles there. “You know Ted said something the other day when we were eating lunch…”

“What did ‘take a seat’ Ted say specifically?” she asked with a smirk.

“This is probably going to be the most superficial question I’ve ever proposed but a man needs to know these things, Scully,” he began and she nodded for him to continue. “Am I man-candy?”

They shared a look at the colourful description Ted had used for the guy who kept the train car awake as they were getting lucky.

Scully gave him a secretive smile. “You’re oggle-worthy.”

Mulder’s face lit up but he quickly recovered. He shook his head and wiped at the corner of his mouth before placing his hand on her stomach again. “I appreciate you noticed.”

“I think the objectifying went both ways,” she admitted.

The hand that had been moving slowly across her belly stopped at her pelvis and his thumb slipped between her folds. Scully’s eyes went wide as the pad of his opposable digit found her clit and circled it carefully.

“Oh god!” she cried out.

Mulder nodded and watched her face in earnest as he continued his careful pattern. Her eyes closed as she felt the electric shocks of sharp pleasure spread through her body. His persistent motions built the sensations moving through her body and she felt his cock twitch inside of her.

“God yes,” she sighed.

Each pass of his thumb across and around her clit made her back arch off the bed. The ministrations of his hand definitely was a tough competitor to the skilled tongue of Fox Mulder. There was a small flash of regret that she sat across from him for so many years without the knowledge he could do this to her body. Perhaps deep down she knew through the passion of their work they would find themselves giving into these desires.

It was unfair for a man to know her body so well before he even penetrated her. Now, as his thumb moved across her bundle of nerves then circled it in a firm yet lazy pattern, she felt it was unfair to have ever experienced anyone doing anything other than this bliss.

This wasn’t the time to lament on past lovers or their clumsy touch. This was the time to rejoice in the fact that Mulder kept his eyes on her as she writhed underneath him on the bed while he worked her into a fevered release.

“God!” she cried out. “I’m gonna come! Oh, my god! Mulder!”

Her back arched off the bed as she felt every muscle in her body grow taught and ache. It was a powerful orgasm that he was pushing her to ride until she couldn’t anymore.

The next wave of rapture rushed over her and she fell back against the bed to arch up again.

“Fuck!” Mulder grunted and his hips pushed into hers as she shuddered.

As her eyes opened and she felt her body grow limp, she watched as Mulder brought his thumb to his lips and licked the juices of her sex off it. His hips rocked forward and she shuddered again at the sensation of being pressed into just a little more.

“You’re having aftershocks,” he noted as he leant down to kiss her cheek gently.

He was tender as he was rough with her. This was something she always assumed about him and she was glad it was true.

As he pulled his body up from hers, Scully put one arm around his neck and the other behind her. Her body held at a forty-five-degree angle and she was almost on his lap in a position that could definitely allow her to do the work. If she couldn’t be on top of him, she wanted to drive this way.

“Scully?” Mulder asked.

She moved her hips down and back towards him in a controlled thrust. Her arm was balancing her body as she clung onto him and moved her pelvis back and forth.

“Fuck,” he sighed.

She moved down and back, down and back over and over again. The angle pushed him far and deep into her as her thighs clung to his waist.

“Oh fuck,” he grunted.

Scully looked up as she saw the familiar look on his face of his resolve beginning to flux. He moved his hand under hers and laid her flat on the bed to regain some control. His long fingers wrapped around her wrist to press it into the mattress as he changed the pace from the one she had set.

“Sorry Scully, I need to drive for a bit,” he said with a smirk before pushing into her with a sharp movement. “That just felt a little too good.”

“Why is that a bad thing?” she asked as she settled herself back into the mattress.

Mulder pulled his hips back and took his time moving back into her. “I don’t want to be a cliche and finish before this really started.”

“Is there a cliche of men who come quickly?” she asked.

“Maybe just in Penthouse,” he replied with a smile.

His green eyes were wild as he studied her underneath him. She felt as though he was really seeing her. He had seen her at her most naive and most skeptical. He had seen her at her lowest ebb of illness and on death’s door as she had him. What else could you do for the someone you love but to save their life?

He knew her mind and now he was learning every inch of her body and where she liked to be touched. The passion was a welcomed inundation to her science and life that had been so compartmentalized before Mulder. Resistance to giving herself to this side of their relationship had been a poor form of self-preservation. There was nowhere left for her to find peace of mind but with Mulder.

His mouth was on her neck as his free hand was touching her breasts. If he was trying to delay his arousal, he was surely expediting hers.

“Touch yourself Scully,” he instructed. “I wanna feel you come again.”

She obliged at his command and used her middle finger to work herself back into another wave of pleasure. It took her less time to get to the point of ecstasy after such a powerful and overwhelming orgasm.

“What does it feel like, Scully?” he asked as his hips continued to move.

“I… oh I can’t…” she shook her head and her eyes closed.

“I want to know how it feels when you come,” he insisted.

“I feel it inside, at the nerves,” she described slowly. “I feel pressure and a climb.”

Mulder nodded. “What else?”

“I feel you inside of me and it feels exponentially better than when I’ve done this on my own and imagining you,” she admitted.

His hips thrust sharply and he kissed at her collarbone. “Tell me more about that. I want to know how you did that.”

Were they at that point already? Did she need to share every fantasy and prior self-gratifying act with him that involved him? Did she want to know what he did to himself while he thought of her? An image flashed in her mind as she pictured him on his couch with his suit pants around his ankles and his cock in his hand.

“Oh god,” she moaned.

The rush of fluid from her sex and a sharp dissolve rushed through her as she felt herself come again. It was a wave of pleasure that built as a burst of gratification spread through her.

The visuals of Mulder doing anything to himself now that she’s witnessed the real thing was too much as he moved in and out of her. Women appreciated the erotic imagery as well.

“What are you thinking about Scully?” Mulder urged as his thrusts slowed.

“I’m thinking…” her voice trailed off and she felt herself flush.

“Say it,” he whispered as he kissed her cheek and down to her collarbone.

She felt the rush of excitement. It had been far too long since she had shared a fantasy with a man and even then it was mostly over the phone to satisfy long distance urges over the semester break.

“You,” she starts and the flush in her cheek deepened. Her inner lips swelled and a new wetness coated her fingers. “Touching yourself… Oh God… On oh! On your couch.”

Mulder grinned and he thrust once more. “That’s a usual afternoon for a guy like myself, Scully. Or a morning. Maybe an evening. I’m always thinking about you when I do it.”

She wanted to make a deprecating remark about his videos but she refrained. The build of her orgasm and the visual of his activities being in the same space they had discussed cases or the loss of a family member was too much.

“Holy shit, you just got even tighter,” Mulder groaned.

The upsurge overtook everything in her body and as she continued to move her finger across her clit, the undulation persevered. It was overwhelming and powerful. If she stopped now, her sexual appetite would be satisfied but something in her wanted to take him over the edge with her.

Scully pushed her hips against his. Her eyes studied his face and saw the resolve crumble.

“I love you, Mulder,” she whispered.

As she continued to ride her orgasm, Mulder suddenly cried out. His hips began pumping and he slammed into her fiercely. She could feel him pulsing inside her as his cock emptied and his teeth found a spot on her shoulder to sink into. She would have a mark there tomorrow.

She didn’t know how long it was before she opened her eyes. A few minutes must have passed because she felt the twitching of his cock subside.

His lips soothed at the spots he had nipped with his teeth and he kissed her lips finally. “Wow.”

She nodded. Wow summed it up.

He reached between them and pulled himself out but remained above her. “I should get a towel.”

Scully pushed on his chest softly. “I need to...”

It took a beat but Mulder understood her inference and moved off of her.

When she was washing her hands, Mulder entered the bathroom and he leaned his backside against the counter. She could feel him studying her and there was definitely a look of wanting to talk. Scully didn’t need a talk tonight or any kind of clarifier. She wanted to sleep next to him and spend the weekend doing more of that.

“Scully,” he started.

She took his hand in hers like she had earlier that night. “If I forget to tell you on Monday, I had a nice time this weekend.”

Mulder smirked. “I was coming in here to say the same thing.”

“You were not,” she questioned.

He kissed her cheek sweetly and she felt the love from him so clearly. “Such a skeptic.”

“I need my overnight bag,” she reminded him.

“Can’t I just stand here and look at you pos coital for a little longer?” he said with a mock pout.

“Maybe you could let me brush my teeth, wash my face and then cuddle me post-coital instead,” she bartered.

“You really are the smartest person I know,” he said in amazement before leaving her in the bathroom.

Scully looked at her naked form in the bathroom mirror after he had gone. Her hair was wild, tangled and looked obvious to her earlier activities. Her make-up was slightly smudged and if she was examining herself, she would know there was a proper amount of fucking that had happened that night.

Mulder set her toiletry bag down on the counter.

“Where’s my nightgown?” she asked and Mulder shook his head slightly. "Did you pack me pajamas at all?"

“I’m going to enforce a no-clothing policy until tomorrow morning’s shower,” he said with a mild authoritative tone. “We can call it a partnership exercise.”

He was being cute and she couldn’t argue with cute right now.

Scully pursed her bottom lip. “I can live with that.”

When they had settled into bed with Scully laying her head on Mulder’s chest in a position that mimicked their sleeping arrangements back in St. Louis except every barrier between them was gone.

The steady sound of Mulder’s heart beating and the scent of his skin under her nose lulled her into a deep sleep. If there was a time to feel happy, this was it.


	8. Chapter 8

The sound of seagulls on the bay, the bright sunshine and the smell of fresh coffee finally roused Mulder from a deep sleep. Over the last week, he had grown accustomed to the solid slumber that the proximity to Dana Scully provided.

It was then he noticed the space next to him was empty and he had a fleeting moment of panic she left some time in the night. His hand slipped across the smooth cotton sheets and felt the mattress where she had slept. It had been empty maybe an hour. He rolled over onto her space and breathed in the scent of Scully on the sheets.

The radio in the kitchen was playing NPR and he could hear the familiar show Scully made them listen to if they were driving on the weekends. She appreciated the mix of local and national news with editorials and human interest pieces. Mostly, she liked that they mixed up the show with classical and indie music. If Scully was anything, she was eclectic with her tastes.

A woman who appreciated order, rules and regulations with a rebellious streak and devoted everything to the man in the basement at the FBI.

If Mulder contemplated why she loved him too long, he might try to convince her not to. Not that she would listen to him anyway. His arguments were always invalid to her without proof.

Eventually, Mulder got out of bed, used the bathroom, brushed his teeth and went downstairs, sans clothing as per his instructions, to find his delicious partner… Was that word still appropriate? What did you call a woman whom you had tasted everywhere and vice versa? Was he too old to be someone’s boyfriend? Does Scully use the word boyfriend?

She was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet on the next chair. There was a mug of coffee steaming in one hand while a crossword puzzle was laid out in front of her. She was twirling a pen as she contemplated each answer.

A feeling disappointment surged through him to see her dressed until he recognised that it was his white shirt from the night before. If anyone could find a loophole in a technicality with basic logic, it was her.

“Good morning,” he greeted as he entered the kitchen.

Scully looked up from her crossword and smiled at him. “Nice outfit.”

“I could say the same for you,” he admonished as he poured his coffee. “But I kind of like seeing you in my clothing.”

Mulder approached her at the table and kissed her head. Scully looked up at him and pulled his mouth in for a kiss.

“Minty,” she noted after he pulled away.

He set his coffee on the table and picked her feet up off the chair to deposit them in his naked lap. Scully handed Mulder half the paper for him to browse through and picked up her coffee and crossword again.

The silence and coffee would be nice if she wasn’t so distracting, sitting there dressed in his shirt with only two buttons fastened. As she bent her knee slightly and tucked her foot under his leg, he noticed the absence of underpants.

She really was a seductress in every sense of the word.

Mulder attempted to read the box scores as his hand brushed up and down her calf. He tried to play it cool with being nonchalant about their current state but they were in a state of undress. He could see small red blotches along her collarbone where his mouth had marked her.

He cleared his throat and his eyes moved back to the sports page. The paper could be describing in detail how the Yankees won against the Red Socks in an unexpected sweep or foretelling the latest letter in Penthouse forum. These things had nothing on Dana Scully studying a newspaper crossword with pursed lips while his shirt gaped in all the right ways on her frame.

“Mulder what’s a six letter word for obtuse?” she asked lightly.

“Opaque,” he replied slowly and took another sip of his coffee.

Her pen scribbled across the page and she took a drink from her mug also. “Thanks.”

A couple in a canoe paddled by their property and Mulder watched the shoreline for more activity. He guestimated the waterfront was about thirty yards away and the bright morning sun would keep out any prying eyes from the kitchen.

He wondered if she could hear his mind plotting how to suavely maneuver her over to the counter or if the swelling of his member against her bare foot was an indicator. She looked up from her paper for a moment and he saw the glimmer of want across her eyes before she shifted in her chair again.

She was coy and quiet this morning but she was tempting and alluring. As she sat with her back straight and her tongue played at the edges of her lip, the visions of her underneath him last night played over in his mind.

If she could feel him watching her, as he did on the train the morning after their first night together, she wasn’t showing it. Her mind was preoccupied with the puzzle in front of her and the mug of coffee she was holding slightly askew in her hand.

Her gaze shifted up to his face and she smiled a little before looking back down at her puzzle. “Mulder, what’s a four letter word for conjugate?”

“Fuck?” he guessed.

“No…” she said quietly. Her pen scribbled across the page. “Bind.”

“You’re setting me up,” he said in quiet protest.

“You have a dirty mind,” she admonished playfully as she set down her mug.

“I’m sure that ‘fuck’ has been used in a New York Times Crossword sometime in the history of the New York Times,” he replied thoughtfully and she laughed. “I’m being serious.”

“This is the Washington Post,” she said as she held up the front page she had discarded along with the business section.

Mulder frowned. “Oh.”

“I like your outfit,” she stated as she picked up her mug again and adjusted the paper.

Mulder looked down at his bare lap to where her foot was getting precariously closer to his swelling member. “This old thing?”

Her lips twitched and she smiled again but kept her eyes on The Post. God, she was a subtle flirt.

“I see you broke my one rule I had for today,” Mulder noted in reference to his shirt she had donned that morning. “Not that I mind. You look good in it.”

She set her mug, pen and paper down and she looked at him frankly. “It was cold this morning.”

“Not that cold,” Mulder noted as he looked down to where her bare backside peeked out from under his shirt.

Scully leaned forward on her elbows across the table and kissed his lips. Her lips pulled back ever so slightly to speak quietly. “I didn’t want to break the rules too much.”

“Story of my life,” he teased and he kissed her again.

This time, the kiss was allowed to build and his tongue snuck past her lips to taste more of her. She tasted like coffee and toothpaste but the underlying flavour of Scully he had grown so fond of. He had said he loved her and she had baulked at first. Ever the scientist, Scully probably had to weigh all the evidence because, while her love for him was clearly tangible, speaking it out loud had larger ramifications. There was no taking that back.

Mulder broke the kiss and pulled Scully towards him, bringing her naked bottom in contact with his swelling cock. It had only been seven hours but his body missed the feeling of her next to him. The proximity to being inside her again as she slid against him made him ache for her.

“Hello,” he said sleepily.

She put her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Good morning.”

His hands rubbed up and down her back and he could feel the idiotic and blissful smile taking over his face. Mulder had no sense of cool when it came to them being together. He might have to work on that when they face the real world but his joy was written all over his face.

“I’m grinning like an idiot aren’t I?” he asked as his mouth made contact with the sensitive skin along her collarbone.

“Your poker face might need some work,” she commented and sighed as his teeth nipped that tender spot she had described to him in detail. “Oh right there, that’s nice.”

“Nice?” he repeated.

“Mulder…” she warned. “My brain, while knowing several different adjectives for something that’s pleasurable, doesn’t have the capacity to decipher between such statements while you’re rubbing against me at this moment.”

Mulder pulled back and looked into her eyes. “You can tell me all about it later.”

One hand was kneading at her backside while the other was travelling up her stomach to cover her breast. Every piece of her he touched was perfect. He liked her compact yet womanly size. He traced the curves at her waist that lead up to her breasts, that were firm but soft, and down to her backside. Mulder had been a breast man in the past but with Scully, it was too hard to choose.

Scully reached between them to tease open the two buttons she had strategically placed when she donned the shirt that morning.

Mulder looked down and shook his head in awe. “It’s a shame you ever wear clothes.”

“I should walk around like this all the time?” she second guessed him.

“No, I’m far too possessive to let anyone see you like this. But if we were the last two people on Earth, I would enforce some bans on clothing,” he stated as his palms moved up her torso to cover her breasts.

“Why do you get to be in charge?” Scully countered. His face must have resembled the same awe-inspired look that he reserved for UFO’s and aliens. “I’m in charge if we are the last two people on Earth.”

“Whatever you say, Scully,” he whispered as his palm moved aside and his face closed in to take her nipple into his mouth.

Her naked thighs on his, her weight settled on top of him and her flushed cheeks on her face made him feel like the luckiest man alive. That was a big statement for a man who spent the last thirty-nine years wondering if he was cursed. Scully was the counter-curse, his good luck charm and the one thing that made his crappy existence worth the hardship.

He was certain he wasn’t just thinking this because she was smiling at him like he just told her science was the new foundation for all his theories.

“Am I thinking out loud again or did you learn to read minds?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I was thinking about what you said in Des Moines.”

Mulder thought for a moment and nodded his head.

“Do you still think you’re dangerous?” she asked as she pushed the men’s shirt off her shoulders so that she was now completely naked. He noted the goosebumps on her arms but her ivory skin was warm to the touch.

“I think we both know I am,” he said regretfully and she shook her head. “I told you the Mulder family passes genetic muster but our social pariah nature and involvement with global conspiracies is a pretty large strike against.”

“I wonder what it says about me that everything you just told me isn’t enough of a deterrent to walk away from this,” she mused as she used the rungs between the chair legs to push herself closer to Mulder.

“Why?”

“I know you,” she stated simply as she tipped his face to meet her eyes. “I can’t imagine my life without you. I wouldn’t want one that didn’t have you in it.”

His heart swelled and he felt his mouth forming that idiotic grin again. “Scully.”

Her cheeks were flushed from the confession but she wasn’t retracting her statement. Confessions of love and a desire to be together against all odds did a lot for their mutual ardour. He felt his cock twitch as she slid her wetness along his length.

“Maybe I’m dangerous too,” she murmured.

“I have no doubt you are,” he agreed.

His hand reached between them and she pushed herself up slightly so that they could align their sexes to become one again. They were such a great fucking team.

He meant that both literally and with the obtuse definition.

As she began her descent down his shaft, he watched her face as he filled her. Her eyes were closed and her lips were slightly parted. She looked like reverence and sex.

The urge to kiss her was overwhelming. He had to taste her lips again.

She was sweet and soft in his hands while her mouth was hot against his tongue. She moaned slightly into his mouth has her hips moved up and down slowly.

There was no panic inside him that he might finish too soon. There was no stalling in his mind to prolong this. His body was prepared to take its time as she was sliding up and down his shaft. Every touch to her body, every sensation of her surrounding him and each sigh that came out of her resonated as he pushed his pelvis up to drive deeper inside.

“Oh, God,” she said as their mouths parted. Her lips found his again and kissed him eagerly. Her hips tilted back and she sped up her pace.

The silent conversation they were having with their bodies was clear. She tilted her hips, Mulder guided her with his hands and they sighed with each downstroke.

As she came down again, his cock met her cervix and she rocked in his lap. She let out an adorable grunt mixed with a whimper and they repeated the action.

“Scully, fuck,” he sighed as she trembled.

“Right there, Mulder,” she moaned. “Right there.”

Her fingers had been playing at the hair on the back of his neck and he needed them to be more useful. He wanted to watch her touch herself while she straddled his lap and rode him like this. He needed to feel her contract around him again. The feeling of Scully coming with him inside of her was intoxicating. She was an addictive substance and Mulder felt hooked.

He took her hand in his and placed it at her sex before he cupped her ass again. She didn’t need words of encouragement or urging from him. The trust from seven years of partnership, the last week of exploring the precursors to a physical relationship and crossing over from last week, knocked the barriers down.

She took her middle finger to her sex and her nails brushed against the base of his cock. She swelled and moaned as her finger moved quickly in tight circles around her clit. His eyes were glued to her face. He could throw away any explicit tape and magazine from his collection because the visual of Scully with her back arching and her fingers between them was the most erotic thing to witness in his life.

His jaw felt slack as she continued to push up and down on his shaft. Their rhythm was steady and if he could just figure out a way to keep them here for the rest of their lives he could die happy. The feeling of her controlling the pace as she moaned was incomparable to any other experience.

A low cloud pushed past the sun and the shadows crossed her face as she turned to rapture.

“Oh god, Mulder! I’m gonna…!” she cried and her nails at his shoulders dug in deep.

There would be four little half moons from each manicured finger on his deltoid muscles tomorrow. Seemed fair, since his mouth had left marks across her abdomen and clavicle.

As her walls clenched around him, he pushed up to feel them contracting at his dick. It felt as though she was trying to suck and pull each ounce from him but his orgasm was slightly off. This was for her. He wanted to make it last a little longer for her before he bent her over the counter and took her there.

He felt primal and animalistic. He wanted to possess her each and every way she would allow him to. Funny how primal he felt about her and yet he still respected her enough to know if she told him right now to let her off his lap, he would retract his hands and wait for further instruction. Maybe this was what it was like to be whipped.

She cried out again as her back arched and she pushed her breasts against his chest. Fuck, she was gorgeous.

Mulder kissed a small droplet of sweat that had travelled down her hairline to her neck and he caught it as it reached her chest. Her sweat tasted sweet. He was whipped and it had only been one night. Seven years, one week and one night.

Her eyes opened slowly as her face became level with his. A smile played on her lips and she kissed him tenderly. A look of confusion crossed her face and she looked between them.

“No?” she asked subtly about his own orgasm.

“Watching you is pretty amazing and what you were doing there was fantastic,” he started as his hands gestured between them. “However, I had some other plans and luckily my whole body was on board with it.”

An eyebrow arched as though he had just told her chocolate milk was the new source of rocket fuel for Nasa. “Other plans?”

Mulder glanced over her shoulder. “If it pleases you, could you stand up?”

Scully bit her bottom lip and pulled it slowly between her teeth as she weighed the options and what was possibly to come. Her chin tucked in as she considered the uncertainty of Mulder’s ideas and her eyes glanced toward the open curtains on the window.

If anyone saw them earlier, they would still be there waiting to see if there was a big finish. The bay was quiet and, except for a few boats on the water, they were in a safe space.

“Trust me,” he prompted and that must have been the two-word argument she needed.

She winced as she dismounted from his lap and he looked down at the glistening sheen to his twitching member. He liked the way it looked when she had been paying attention to it.

Yes, Fox Mulder, he thought to himself, you are a whipped man.

“I’m standing,” she said obviously and put her hands on her hips.

Mulder stood slowly and pulled her to him by her wrists. He kissed her softly and thoroughly. Her lips responded in kind. Her tongue complimented against his and he walked her slowly through the kitchen until her backside met the cupboards and granite.

With two quick hands and without breaking the kiss, he lifted her up to be level against the counter and, most importantly, in line with his protruding flesh.

“Here?” she asked as her backside met the cool granite.

“Too cold?” he said as he lined himself up to push inside her again.

Scully shook her head. “I’m not in the least bit cold.”

He began to push in slowly and he felt is jaw grow slack. “Fuck, woman you are tight.”

She sighed as he waited for her walls to adjust and nudged his backside with her heels to push in the rest of the way. “I think that’s pretty typical after an orgasm.”

Thinking back on his past love affairs and how things felt, it just didn’t compare. Nothing could or would. Maybe that’s what happened when you really loved someone. And his past experiences all began to wilt in the rose gardens of Mulder’s sexual experiences.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“I was clearing out some old dusty boxes in my head. Making room for new stuff,” he explained.

Scully smiled and asked playfully, “What were they labelled?”

“Things you think are great but pale in comparison to this moment,” he mused.

“Mulder, you’re such a sap,” she admonished with a laugh but he could tell she approved.

He smiled back at her but didn’t fight it. “I have the idiot grin on again, don’t I?”

She shook her head slowly but they both began to nod in unison. “You are grinning like an idiot, yes.”

“This might not wear off any time soon,” he warned as he gestured to his face.

Her nails scraped along his scalp and he felt the sensation run down his back to cause him to shiver. Her voice was low as she said, “I think it’s good we have the weekend to get this out of our systems.”

“Just the weekend?” he questioned.

Her fingers moved from his hair down to dance along his shoulders toward his arms. “We should figure out a system…”

Her voice trailed off as he watched her mind begin to calculate how exactly a relationship could function between work and maintaining her own sense of self. He knew how important her time alone was to her especially when he encroached on that for work. She needed time to decompress and reflect. Her mood improved dramatically on a long case after she had a few hours alone with a bath and some food. Something inside of him felt a copious amount of conflict since he wanted to take care of her but have her all to himself at the same time.

As he stood there with his cock fully inside her, there was some internal debate and he wanted to get back to the primal part of their morning.

“Scully… Whatever works for you, I’m sure will be great with me,” he started. “I want this but I’m not expecting...”

“What?”

“I know you need… space?”

The last word came out as a question because he wasn’t sure how to put it.

She nodded and her muscles inside flexed slightly. “I do.”

“I’m just saying I’m going to try really hard to respect that,” he promised.

She pulled her lips in and pressed them together. This was a look he had seen before. She was going to try to tell him something he didn’t want to hear.

“What?”

“Mulder…” she started. She took his face in his hands and pulled his mouth in for a quick kiss. “I appreciate that but if you suddenly stopped involving me in a case at two a.m. or you unexpectedly left my apartment without me kicking you out, I might worry you were an alien shape-shifter. Or that you had a head injury and your behaviour was being affected…”

“What are you saying?” he asked feeling truly confused.

“Just be you. It’s what got us here,” she replied.

The idiot grin came back. “Really?”

“I appreciate the thought,” she repeated. “But I think we both know we need to be ourselves if this is going to succeed. We have to work at it like we did our partnership. Just with more sex.”

Mulder’s hips pushed against hers and their mouths met. The declarations of Dana Scully, while he was inside her, were his new favourite thing. He used to think he needed sunflower seeds, food, water and air but maybe just this in life could sustain him.

“Scully,” he started.

“Yes?”

“I love you,” he stated. There was a beat between them and he held up a finger in warning. “Don’t say the thing.”

Scully smiled a little. The “thing” meant a conversation Mulder had thought about for over a year. He never tired of hearing it or saying it.

Her lips brushed his. “I love you too, Mulder… But I’m sitting naked on a counter in a kitchen and I’m ready for a fucking demonstration of your whole body plan.”

His lips twitched and she looked at him impishly.

“That’s no way for a lady to talk,” he admonished as his hips pulled back.

He slammed into her and she cried out.

“Fuck!”

His hand gripped her backside with the other flat on the countertop behind her. A strong, steady rhythm began and her heels pushed into his lower back. Her arms looped under his to hold onto his back as he slammed into her repeatedly.

She cried out again as his teeth grazed along her shoulder.

“God, you feel so good,” he grunted.

“So good,” she sighed.

Every thrust back into her body caused her to whimper. He was becoming addicted to that sound.

Tightening and tingling inside his balls signalled his orgasm was approaching. He gripped her hips with a more unyielding hold as each thrust became relentless to his own release.

Her jaw dropped and her eyes closed as she held onto him as he fucked her.

“Yes, Mulder,” she moaned. “Fuck me! Yes!”

“Scully!” he bellowed as he emptied himself inside of her. His body went taught and he pushed hard one last time. “Fuck!”

He held her ass in his hands as he panted and his cock twitched inside of her. The joints in his knees were aching to buckle under the release of endorphins and if it was possible to take a cat nap right there, still inside her, he might try.

He grunted and turned his face as he coughed over his shoulder. They both winced.

“Oh I shouldn’t have done that,” he said and looked down as his half-swollen extremity slowly slipped out of her.

Scully looked over his shoulder and nodded toward the paper towel. “Do you mind grabbing me some?”

He grabbed two sheets and dampened them with some water before handing them to her.

“This is the kind of messiness a prophylactic would prevent,” she commented as she cleaned up.

“Do you want us to-”

Scully put her hand on his chest. “No. I was just making an observation.”

“I would-”

“I know you would,” she said and patted his face. “That’s sweet but it almost feels ridiculous to use something when pregnancy isn’t anything we have to worry about.”

He felt more than guilty about the baby part and she knew that. He also knew she wasn’t using that to hurt his feelings. It was just part of a truth they had to painfully accept as fact.

“Unless you’re offering for some other reason?” Scully asked.

He shook his head. “I haven’t been with anyone in years. You know that.”

She looked down at the kitchen floor. “I just didn’t know after last year with Diana-”

“No.”

“My last… person…” Scully stumbled over these words as though she was trying to avoid saying Ed Jerse’s name. He didn’t know if he wanted her to say it freely or not. “We were safe.”

He studied her face and nodded slowly. They really should have had this conversation before they moved forward in their relationship but his assumption had always been that the rational scientist wasn’t going to enter into a physical relationship with anyone without a prophylactic present. Ed Jerse happened at a bad time between them but even with her rebellious streak showing itself, she would still be smart about sex. Mulder, on the other hand, had been such a stickler for protection over his years. It confused him that it didn’t occur in his mind to even ask Scully before last night. Maybe it said more about how he felt for her than he realised.

“If you change your mind about the mess,” he started and caught the look in her eye. “I don’t want to be the guy who protests because of how it feels or some bullshit. It’s fine with me, whatever you want.”

“I want a shower. I want to walk to that diner across the bay for breakfast. I want us to shop for food since I didn’t see much to make dinner and I want to do this again later,” she replied.

He tried to act cool about the fact that she had just declared more sex later. Mulder could be cool about this.

He stepped away from the counter and took the soiled paper towel from her hand to deposit it into the rubbish bin.

“Okay?” she asked.

He cleared his throat and tried not to look too happy. “Sure, Scully.”

She smiled a little. “Four hours should be plenty of refractory time for you, Mulder.”

“Is that a challenge?” he asked with a leer.

Leering at a woman after you’ve just had sex two different ways in a kitchen was a little different than one you were trying to make blush in a crowded police squad room after too much coffee and not enough sleep. This time, when he whispered in her ear about something unpartnerly, she would have a first-hand account of what he was thinking. Transitioning from friends to lovers was going to have some perks.

“Bring your coffee upstairs and test your mettle if you feel like it,” she said with a casual shrug before she sauntered up the stairs without his shirt.

“Game on,” he whispered.

 

***

There was a light breeze along the waterfront but the temperature was mild for the afternoon. As they walked across the parking lot with their groceries in hand, a sense of pride and happiness overwhelmed him. He glanced over his shoulder to anyone who might be looking but the residents of Chester were busy with their own lives.

He observed the shoppers getting in and out of their vehicles, anyone idling got a second longer to note their appearance until Scully tugged on his jacket sleeve with her free hand.

“What?” Mulder asked as he looked down at her standing by the car. He realized she must be waiting for him to unlock the door and he nodded to fish the keys out of his pocket. “Sorry.”

“No…” she said slowly and pulled on the lapel of his grey North Face windbreaker. She stood on her toes and planted a soft kiss on his lips.

His eyes closed as the paranoia from his mind flitter into the background and he began to focus on her. How her tongue tasted his as it slid into his mouth to tickle his. Her fingers gripping his jacket tighter as she pushed her body against his. She pulled away and smiled at him knowingly.

“Relax.”

Mulder’s face turned up in a smile and he couldn’t fight it. “Okay.”

She pulled the sunglasses off the collar of her striped shirt and put them on her face with a satisfied smile. “Seriously.”

“I know it sounds paranoid but I keep thinking someone is lurking and wanting to spoil this,” he admitted. He gave her forehead a quick peck and reached around her to open her car door. “None of the people here look to be observing us if you were wondering.”

He took the grocery bag from her and placed both of them on the back seat before getting in on the driver’s side. Scully turned to look at him after putting on her seatbelt.

“If someone was following us this weekend Mulder, who would it be?” she asked.

Mulder thought for a moment. “I suppose someone working with CGB Spender? Digging for dirt?”

“And if they saw us here, kissing or going shopping at a grocery store, what can they do with that?” she asked again.

She was making him work through the problem in his own mind by proposing questions he would need to answer. The unreasonable side of Mulder that was scared of the danger he would put her in appreciated that.

“They could… I don’t know, Scully,” he admitted.

“Are you worried Kersh would use it?” she asked.

“After Peyton Ritter and the close call-” he stopped himself. Almost losing her to friendly fire and carelessness still made his blood boil.

“The syndicate?” she proposed.

“Maybe?” he thought out loud.

“Do you want to go back to Washington?” she offered.

“No!” he cried and her eyebrows shot up. Mulder shook his head. “Just let me get this out of my head.”

“We still haven’t had lunch,” Scully pointed out.

He glanced down at the clock on the car radio. “Most of the places here close in the next hour.”

“Then you’d better drive over to that cafe so we can get take out,” she replied as she pointed toward the Kelly green awning of the cafe they passed earlier.

He turned the key over in the ignition and nodded. “Okay, boss.”

  
***

  
Mulder was unloading groceries into the fridge as Scully was using the Lysol kitchen cleaner on the counter while their soup and salads waited for them on the table. He knew not to argue about cleanliness and his standard of clean versus hers so he watched as she bent down to where her naked bottom had been only a few hours previously and sprayed the area one last time to wipe with a clean paper towel.

“I think you got it,” he mentioned as he closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it to watch her wipe the area again.

His eyes moved from her waist down to her backside and he oggled freely. She really did have a great ass. It was heart shaped and perky but his most favourite part was the curve at the top of her thighs where her ass and her legs met. It made him think dirty-man thoughts and he reached down to adjust himself as the ideas made him grow hard.

“Can you get me a water?” Scully asked as she stood up and turned to him. Her mouth quirked into a smile and she glanced down to his jeans. “Something on your mind?”

“That spot,” he said as he approached her. He took the paper towel from her and placed it behind her on the counter. His hands cupped at her backside and his fingers grazed that sacred space while his desire for her pushed into her belly. “That spot I couldn’t stop touching in the shower.”

Her cheeks flushed a little and she shook her head. “It’s just the crease of my buttocks.”

She mentioned parts of her body that were off limits until last week like they’re just anything but to him they’re places he wants to spend hours getting to know intimately. It’s not just anything on her. She’s not just a woman. She’s Scully and now she’s more in the possessive form of whatever they’re calling their relationship. Scully might still try to claim that “partner” blankets all forms of what they’ve transitioned into. He wanted to call her his because she was.

In any other relationship in his life, after one night together, Mulder would be hedging his bets and thinking about escape plans. No one ever seemed to fit him the way she did. Furthermore, no one ever made him feel this at ease. Scully didn’t seem to be on the fence about him and that security also relaxed him a lot.

“It makes me want to do things to you,” he admitted and kissed her cheek.

The stubble on his face had made her neck and cheeks raw earlier and so he had shaved after their shower that morning. His lips soothed every raw patch around her mouth she had used a powdered concealer on as they dressed to leave their rental.

“You have to let me eat first,” she bargained. “I can’t come on an empty stomach.”

“Can’t?”

Mulder could eat twelve hundred calories in one sitting or skip food all day for coffee and seeds. His hunger wasn’t regulated by clocks and schedules. That being said, he had watched Scully push aside food for work on an occasion. It said a lot about her feeling of contentment that she was admitting her own needs or weaknesses - not that needing to eat was a weakness.

Scully’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly and they both looked at each other in surprise before she laughed. “See?”

“Okay. Food first,” Mulder sighed as he stepped away from her. “Then I get to pay proper homage to that spot.”

Her eyes caught his. “You’re not going to-”

“I just want to look at it,” he assured her and sat down at the table. “Eat your soup.”

 

****

  
Scully collapsed forward on the bed as her arms gave out and laid on her side while she tried to regain her breath. Mulder looked down at his glistening member as it twitched and then back to Scully. He laid down next to her on the bed and smiled at her. She smiled back.

“Wow,” he commented.

“Wow is a good word,” she noted.

“I’m glad I agreed eating first was on the agenda,” Mulder said. “That was quite the workout.”

Scully looked over her shoulder to the head of the bed where the clock radio was telling them their dinner reservation at The Narrows was approaching. “What time was supper?”

“I think he said seven-thirty,” Mulder replied. In an attempt to get more comfortable, he shifted on his back and pulled the quilt at the end of the bed over his torso. “I need a nap.”

“I can’t decide if I want another shower,” Scully mentioned as Mulder tucked the blanket over her as well.

“I’m going to think you have a Catholic conscience about sex and sin if you need a shower after sex,” he replied. He opened his eyes to see her raising her eyebrow in question. “Do you?”

Scully pushed the quilt off her body and went into the bathroom. She called over her shoulder, “I don’t think I would have said yes to what we just did and how we did it if I really had some Catholic guilt about all of this.”

Mulder nodded more to himself than to her and closed his eyes again. He felt the bed shift when she came back and he reached out to find her breast. “Are you cold?”

“No,” she commented. “Those are just usually cool to the touch when I’m not wearing a bra.”

“Would you object if I just held my hand here while I snoozed?” Mulder asked.

Scully scooted herself toward him so her back was against his side and she placed his hand on her breast again. “Just a quick nap. I don’t want to be late.”

“Yes, boss,” Mulder teased.

He felt two sharp nails pinch at his side and he yelped. Scully laughed.

“Are you making fun of me now?” she asked.

“Never,” he replied quickly. “And if I am it’s out of love and respect.”

“Mulder…”

“I rock the boat on so many things, Scully,” Mulder said.

“And I want a partner, not an employee,” she retorted.

“What about a sex slave?” he quipped as his hand travelled down her breast at to her hips.

Scully’s hand caught his and put it back on her chest. “Down boy.”

****

For over thirty years, the Narrows Restaurant has served the residents and visitors to Kent Island. The menu boasted such classics from a New York Strip to Chicken Oscar and crab cakes described as heavenly.

The relaxed atmosphere was one they appreciated while the food was of a calibre they rarely were able to enjoy. It was New England at its best. It was casual but quaint, delicious and scenic. The view of the bay wasn’t common for their normal dives during work weeks. Usually on a case they were taken to middle America with flat lands and wheat fields. Mulder wondered if there was a correlation between paranormal activity and geography. Regardless of location, the places they dined at usually had vinyl booth seats and chipped laminate table tops.

The Narrows didn’t have tablecloths either but Scully insisted that anything too fancy just put added pressure on an otherwise wonderful time she was having.

Mulder, happy to comply, was grateful they could wear jeans and enjoy a nice meal at a good price. Admittedly, Mulder liked a bargain.

That evening, the restaurant was crowded but their table was ready. The host offered them a sample glass of the house selection when they entered and Mulder took two glasses of white from the young woman. As he sipped the fruity and crisp wine, he decided he was more of a beer guy.

Scully mentioned once during a case last year that she liked Shiner Bock and he decided he should keep that stocked in his fridge. If he was really hoping she might come around more, he would purchase a few of the items she picked up at the grocery store. He knew brands she liked because he had watched her make lists during layovers at airports or paid attention to those left behind at the office.

Mulder would dine out for every meal to avoid the inconvenience of needing to purchase, prepare and clean up yet he understood Scully would rather prepare her own food out of a need for control over her own diet that was in constant flux from their frequent travels. If he was going to keep things around that she liked, it might entice her to be there more often. He probably should clean his apartment more often too.

He wasn’t a dummy. He knew that much about women and to pay attention to the spots that made her moan.

As the waitress approached, Mulder watched Scully as she observed the waves along the shoreline in quiet thought. He honestly couldn’t tell what was going through her mind at the time and they quickly turned to smile in politeness when she reached their table.

“Good evening folks, I’m Lisa and I’ll be your server tonight. How are we doing?” a chipper voice greeted as she set down two glasses of water in front of them.

Mulder looked over to Scully who was smiling politely at the young woman.

"Hungry,” he spoke up.

“That’s great, we’ve got food!” Lisa replied with an overly cheerful voice that Mulder suspected was not her natural state of being. “Do you folks have any questions about the menu at all?”

Mulder ordered a beer for himself and Scully asked for another glass of the white wine they sampled in the lobby. They ordered the steamed clams starter that Lisa assured them was a great choice. Mulder always found that to be encouraging at restaurants when the servers told him his choices were good however it was probably a safe bet they were trained to do so.

It didn’t take long for them to decide to share the seafood feast and a salad. As they mulled over if this would be too much food, Lisa returned with their clams and bar beverages.

“Should I give you two a few more minutes with the menus or are we ready to order?”

“We’re going to share the Gulf Salad and that seafood platter,” Scully replied. She waited for Lisa to finish writing down the order before handing the menus. “No spinach.”

Lisa nodded at her order pad and smiled. “Friday night special and a salad. Good choice!”

When Lisa was out of earshot, Mulder smirked at Scully. “You ever wonder if they’re thinking ‘ew gross, don’t order that!’ when they say good choice?”

Scully smiled. “Probably.”

“That might not be good for business,” he said quietly. “We should have got the fried green tomatoes!”

“Why?”

“I liked that movie,” Mulder admitted and Scully laughed. “I did!”

“How does a man who has Caddyshack in his collection appreciate Fried Green Tomatoes?” she asked as she picked up a clam.

Mulder shook his head.

“Is it an embarrassing story? Now you have to share.”

He looked out the window. “Something about that accent and the feisty nature of Idgie Threadgoode. I always liked women with a backbone.”

Scully fought a smile and shook her head. “I was always more partial to Steel Magnolias but I’ll give that movie another shot.”

“Steel Magnolias!” Mulder cried and Scully gave him her best mock-hurt face. “I guess you could have said Beaches. That might have been worse.”

“I’m not being criticised on my movie choices by a man who has Uncle Buck in his movie collection next to Ultimate Blondes,” she retorted and ate her mussel. “Good.”

Mulder ate one of the light and tender clams and nodded in agreement. He said in his most serious voice, “Ultimate Blondes has really great dialogue and an overall character arc of Jeremy that you would appreciate.”

Scully threw her head back and laughed. It was throaty and deep as though the wine she had consumed so far had made her more giddy and relaxed.

As their meals arrived, they had managed to have some pleasant conversation outside of his video habits and chick flicks. What seemed to translate from their off hours at work to this part of their relationship was that they truly enjoyed being together. He could tell she felt relaxed and happy because he could see that small part of her gums when she smiled. She ordered a second glass of wine with dinner and rubbed the top of her foot against his calf.

“Scully…” Mulder started.

“Yes?” she asked as she leaned forward on her elbows conspiratorially.

“As far as dates go…”

She tucked her chin towards her. “Yes?”

“How am I doing?”

Her eyes softened and she smiled softly. “Pretty great.”

“I feel like I want to ask you some war stories but I don’t know if I could handle it,” he admitted.

She sat up a little straighter and moistened her bottom lip with her tongue. “I don’t have a lot of war stories.”

That was hard to believe. “Really?”

“I didn’t do a lot of casual dating,” she admitted. “Did you?”

Mulder shook his head and his mouth moved to the side. “I had some bad breakups. I was a serial monogamist.”

“I was told you got around,” Scully admitted and he gave her a questioning look. “When I was first assigned, I was in the bathroom before my meeting with Blevins after our case in Oregon. This woman from the steno-pool told me you were a hot piece of ass, put on this awful lipstick and winked at me.”

Mulder looked really confused. “Someone called me a hot piece of ass?”

“Yes.”

He looked off into the distance thoughtfully. “I didn’t know women talked about men like that.”

“Mulder… I know you’ve watched Sex and the City,” she reminded him.

“One time! It was on my tv one time and you accuse me of watching it!” he cried and she laughed again. “So women talk like that about men?”

“They’re more specific than you’d think,” she replied.

“So Scully, if you were going to confide in anyone about this weekend?” he asked.

Scully shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I think I wouldn’t want to jinx it,” she said.

“Who believes in such _nonsense_?” he replied with a smile. He took another sip of his beer. “Okay, so you wouldn’t share every detail with Ellen?”

She sighed and looked out the window again. “I never really share every detail but if I did I would say nothing but nice things.”

Mulder nodded once, accepting that as a good answer. He liked the idea of being bragged about but there was something to be said about keeping this all to himself. He was too possessive to share any details with anyone else. The only person he would want to tell about this was Scully but she was here.

She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and set it on the table. “If you’ll excuse me.”

When Scully left the table, he ate a few more of the mussels and finished his beer. He looked over to the adjacent table where a family with three toddler-aged children and one infant were trying to contain the cutlery and crayons to the table.

A half-blue-half-red crayon made its way over to Mulder’s feet and he attempted to catch the eye of the father who had obviously shaved for that night. He had a piece of toilet paper stuck to his cheek.

Admittedly, he had always wanted kids of his own but the idea was abhorrent before now. It probably said more about the women he was with and their relationships than he wanted to dissect at the moment. He thought about kids with Scully the first time when they were in Home, Pennsylvania. It was pre-cancer and post-abduction but their lives together had become flirtier and more solid on the friendship grounds. He felt comfortable touching her when he made a joke and on occasion, she reached out for him. Once she talked about herself as a mother, he had this primordial urge to plant a seed inside of her and watch her belly swell with life.

Neither of them knew that wouldn’t be a possibility but he could still think of her on those terms. It was possessive and basic as a man of him but that was part of his feelings toward Scully.

Part of him wondered if she wanted him to call her Dana…

“Jessie!” a woman’s voice called and Mulder looked down to see a smiling girl with dark eyes and olive skin. “Jessie, come here.”

“Hi,” Mulder greeted and the little girl reached to him. Mulder, knowing picking up strange kids in strange towns, wasn’t the best idea for a man so he merely shook the little girl’s hand. He offered her the crayon and she opened and closed her palms quickly as though she wanted to grab at something. “Up?”

The little girl half shook and half nodded her head, repeating the action with her hands. “Uuuuuup! Up! Up!”

Mulder glanced over to the parents who were picking up the crayons from around the table. He lifted the little girl onto his lap and she smiled at him mischievously. “Are you Jessie?”

The little girl nodded once and poked at her chest with a chubby thumb. “Chessie!”

“I’m Mulder,” he introduced himself.

“Muller!” she declared. The little girl took the crayon from Mulder and drew a wonky circle on his paper placemat. “O!”

“Nice job,” he congratulated.

“Jessie!” the mom approached with the infant on her hip. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Mulder said and stood up with Jessie clutching his sweater. “Let’s go back to your table, huh?”

“Chessie’s frand,” Jessie said to her mother as she pointed at Mulder.

“Oh I see you made a friend,” the mother replied in a light tone. “But we talked about stranger danger, sweetie.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m an FBI agent,” Mulder offered to the mother.

“Somewhat,” the mother replied.

The father stood up at the table and reached his arms out to Jessie. Jessie burst into a fit of giggles and reached back for her dad.

“You’ve got a thing-” Mulder told the father and pointed at the spot on his own cheek where the toilet paper was on his.

The dad brushed quickly with his hand and the toilet paper stuck to his middle finger. “I asked if there was anything on my face.”

“Derek, I didn’t see that side of your face. I was nursing Molly,” the mother reminded him.

At that moment, another child dashed from the table and the mother handed the baby to Mulder before running after him.

“Your wife is fast,” Mulder noted as she caught the young boy by his waist and scooped him up.

“Chioke thinks he’s a leopard,” Derek replied about the little boy.

Mulder tried not to make a face about the first name. He wasn’t one to throw stones when his name was Fox.

“That’s an interesting name,” he commented.

“Well he’s obviously adopted,” Derek replied as he pointed to the chocolate skin and black hair on Chioke. “But his mother asked when we adopted him from Nigeria to keep is birth-name.”

Mulder looked over to the other little boy who was sitting at the table. He had the same dark hair and olive skin as Jessie but nothing like the parents who were obviously spread a little thin.

“They’re all adopted except for Molly,” Derek explained.

Derek’s wife returned and sat Chioke back in his high chair, strapping in the young little boy as he laughed. “I’m Caroline by the way.”

“Mulder,” he said and looked down at the infant in his arms who he guessed was maybe about six months. “Hi Molly.”

Molly pulled on a piece of Mulder’s sweater and then studied her fingers. Scully approached just then and they exchanged a brief smile.

“Hi,” Scully greeted hesitantly. Her eyes focused on Molly in Mulder’s arms and she smiled at the baby. “Hi there.”

The baby looked up at Scully and smiled before diving into her arms. Scully quickly reached out and propped the baby on her hip.

“I think your kids all need that stranger-danger talk,” Mulder noted.

Caroline shook her head with a sigh. “Everyone in Chester is so nice and we all know each other. It would not occur to them that there are strangers since almost everyone here is our neighbour.”

“Except the tourists,” Derek retorted. He put Jessie back in her booster seat and pointed a finger at her in warning. “You’ll find that out when you have your own.”

“We can’t-” Scully began in a panick.

“Neither could we. Jessie, Chioke and TJ were our blessings.”

“And Molly?” Mulder asked at the baby in Scully’s arms who looked just like Derek and Caroline.

“A reason to never to give up on a miracle,” Caroline said with a smile. She held her hands out to Molly and the infant reluctantly let go of Scully to return to her mother. “It was nice meeting you folks, even if you are the FBI.”

“We’re the good guys,” Mulder retorted and Molly blew a raspberry.

Lisa approached the crowd of adults and smiled cheerfully. “Sir I was just told your food was ready. If you and your wife want to head back to your table.”

Mulder nodded obediently and put his hand on Scully’s lower back. “Nice to meet you folks.”

He was hoping the rest of their evening wouldn’t be dampened by meeting that family. Scully didn’t usually fall into a puddle of despair when she met other families and kids. There was a short silence between them as they walked back toward their table. Mulder was worried she would become lost in thought and retreat back into herself.

Scully smiled at Mulder as they sat at their table and Mulder tried to read her body language.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replied and he believed her. “Thinking about miracles.”


	9. Chapter 9

The jasmine scented Epsom salts and the steam from the torrid water filled the bathroom. The corner tub offered a view of the bay, room for two and a ledge that was the perfect place for beverages.

The sound of slow music filled the upstairs and the lights twinkled across the bay. The view from the upstairs bathroom was just as wonderful as the rest of the house but no one was really taking in the sights of Crab Alley Bay. The naked flesh of a person, while aroused and slick with water, wasn’t one you might forego observing to watch boats passing by.

When Scully discarded her shoes and hung her jacket by the door, she looked at Mulder with a frank expression and told him she needed a bath. He nodded in understanding, expecting her to retire to her private space for an hour. Instead, she reached her hand down his jeans and asked if he could start the water while she gathered her bath salts.

Despite a day of sex, he felt his arousal surge before the tub got to the perfect temperature.

Mulder tried to flick the bubbles off his fingers before he handed Scully her wine and picked up his own beer.

“What are we toasting?” she asked as she shifted closer towards him.

Her voice was low and if he wasn’t hard prior to hearing her speak, he would be well on his way now.

He wanted to say they were toasting them because who thought they would ever make it as partners, let alone this. He wanted to toast her for not running screaming for the hills seven years ago. He wanted to toast Blevins for assigning her as a scientist to debunk his work and for validating him with his peers. Everything else felt flippant but part of him worried if he told her too much of how he felt, she might back away.

There was something deep down in him that wondered if he would ever not wonder if she might leave. It wasn’t anything about her or her commitment to him but his level of self-worth when it came to women and deserving their affections had always been something entirely different.

“Uh, us?” he offered.

Scully pushed her lower lip out a little and her eyes narrowed on his face. “What were you really going to say?”

She probably has been reading his mind this whole time or whatever he was thinking was all over his face and he hadn’t learned how to lie to her yet.

“I had a speech in my head-”

Scully laughed. “Of course you did.”

“I refrained from saying it because it was full of feelings and sap,” he continued.

“Mulder, did you hit your head?” she asked lightly as she touched the spikes of his chestnut locks as though he might have just accused a tornado of hurling a bovine at him.

“No,” he replied quickly.

“Have I ever not wanted you to tell me how you feel?” she continued.

“No…”

“I was just thinking - if you were curious to know how I felt?” she began and Mulder nodded for her to continue. “That this was such a journey of people betting against us. I can’t believe we made it here.”

“You were?” he clarified.

“And that you put up with how tightly I cling to my science even when I’m looking right at a grey alien fetus,” she replied with a self-deprecating shake of her head. “And that you look at me like that and I know I’m desired.”

“You’re surprised about me?”

“Like I said Mulder, the ladies liked to remind me of what a hot piece of ass you are,” she said and took another sip of her wine. She reached between them and stroked his member softly. “For this. I can’t believe you feel this way about me.”

Mulder shook his head. “Really?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I think it would have to be frustrating and I feel grateful you stuck with me as I opened myself up to believe in more than God and science.”

“ _Scully_ …” he said in reverence.

“I’m not saying I am going to start my own chapter of MUFON,” she backtracked. “I just wouldn’t balk at a membership… If they even had members anymore.”

“I would pull out my wallet to show you my expired membership card but I don’t have any pants on,” he teased. “What did Groucho Marx say? He didn’t want to belong to a club that would have him?

“Is that how you feel about romance?”

“I think up until last week I was solid in that belief,” he said.

“You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe,” she quoted.

“You did not just quote Carl Sagan to me while you’re stroking my dick,” he said with mock surprise.

“I like to keep you guessing,” she said and gave him a squeeze. “I’ll get my mother to needlepoint that on a pillow for you.”

“I’m fine with that Scully as long as you don’t tell her how that reference came about,” he said and they laughed.

Mulder took another pull from his beer before he set it on the side of the tub. He used his hands on her hips to pull her onto his lap through the water and she kept her glass level as her folds came into contact with his hardness.

“What happens after we get back to D.C?” Mulder asked.

Scully carefully took another sip of her wine and set her glass next to his beer. “We went over this. We keep on as we are.”

“But with more sex,” he clarified.

“More sex,” she confirmed.

“What do you need?” he asked as he reached between them to cup her breast. “From me?”

“Are you asking me to barter conditions?” she questioned and her eyes closed as he took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m asking if you have any expectations I might not have been otherwise able to know about needing to live up to if you hadn’t told me,” he replied as his other hand grazed along the crease of her ass. “Every person has them.”

“What are yours?” she asked as she reached between their bodies to align his cock with her folds.

“I think I want the benefit of the doubt and to try to do the same for you,” he replied.

Scully lifted her hips slightly and they braced themselves as she sunk down slowly and carefully onto his length.

“Benefit of the doubt?” Her walls adjusted and Scully pushed her forehead onto Mulder’s chest as her fingertips pushed into his muscles on either side of her face.

“My parents ignored each other’s needs for so long and were the kind of people who did things out of spite and resentment,” Mulder explained as his fingers skimmed along where they were joined. His fingers grazed at her lips and back to her the opening between her ass cheeks. “We had some of that last year when we first got back on the X-Files.”

“I suppose if we have reasons to doubt-” her voice cut off as his finger grazed her back door and she quivered. “We should talk it through.”

“I think you like that more than you’re letting on,” he noted as he pushed his hips up slightly. “But to your point, I couldn’t agree more.”

She took his hand from her backside and put it on her hips before she began a slow rhythm. Their mouths sought each other out to kiss as their movements impelled. She moved her arm around Mulder’s neck while the other reached between them to touch herself. He felt the familiar pulse around him as her walls clenched at her own touch.

“You feel too good sometimes,” he said through gritted teeth.

Scully bit her lip as she moved her hips slightly up and down and her finger continued it’s movements. “Oh God… I’m gonna come.”

“Keep going,” he urged her and his mouth kissed along her collarbone and his fingers ran along the crease of her ass again.

A long moan filled the room and she tilted her hips forward as she hit the downstroke on his hardened flesh.

“You like that,” he commented as his fingers pushed toward the divide in the rounded flesh he was currently massaging.

Scully shook her head and some tendrils fell loose around her face from the clip she used earlier to keep her hair off her face.

“No.”

“No?” Mulder clarified as his fingers retreated and skitted again toward the small back entrance. “I think you like that to be touched there a little.”

“Fuck you,” she groaned as she leaned into his touch.

“A little?” he asked as his finger pushed on the entrance again but remained outside.

No matter what Mulder watched on his tapes that weren’t his, what he experienced with women had been much more mainstream. He wanted everything with Scully but respected her enough to be happy with as much as she was willing to give him.

“Oh god!” she cried as his finger slipped just inside.

“Scully…” Mulder started and his finger crooked slightly to find a pulsing vein. “You do like it.”

A low moan escaped her and she hissed, “Yes…”

Moving in tandem, his hips and finger pushed up and down slowly. “I won’t tell anyone you’re a bad girl.”

A flush took over her cheeks and she looked at him with wild blue eyes he had yet to see with the complete abandon she was lost in.

“Fuck!” she cried.

“Someone like you who rides my fingers while they talk about how they sucked my cock,” Mulder whispered into her ear. “Feels just like how your cunt is sucking on me now.”

“That’s a bad word,” she groaned and her head fell back to expose her neck to him. “You’re a bad man.”

“I told you I was dangerous,” he said as his finger extended and he rubbed the pad along the vein inside her.

“Oh! My! God!” she gasped and he felt everything inside of her clench and swell. “Oh fuck! Mulder!”

He held on as she bucked on top of him and he felt himself fall over the precipice with her. Every ounce of him emptied out and he groaned loudly as she pushed her hips into his as their release took over.

They were panting as their bodies calmed from their surrender to pleasure. Mulder carefully retracted his finger from inside her and watched her face as his hand caressed her backside.

“Okay?” he asked as the water sloshed around them.

“I was wondering if that was something you might want,” she noted as she looking into his eyes. “Your video collection and those magazines you don’t subscribe to.”

“It’s crossed my mind,” he confessed. “Not just because of the movies and magazines. I wouldn’t take it any further than you might feel comfortable with, Scully.”

“I trust you,” she assured him. “But I’m not the kind of woman who has that on a daily menu.”

Mulder nodded. “I respect that.”

She kissed his lips quickly and pulled off of his lap. His member immediately felt cooler in the water than inside her. He watched as she stood up in the bath. The water was glistening off her body and the candle light illuminated every part of her he had coveted since he had a glimpse in Bellefluer. Except Mulder had to put Scully in a box that said do not touch.

“Sometimes being a man is unfair,” he noted.

“Why?” she asked with a smirk as she stepped carefully out of the tub.

He watched as she meticulously used a towel to remove the excess water and cleaned herself off from their lovemaking. A fluffy housecoat wrapped around her shoulders but she left it untied.

“Mulder?” Scully prompted.

“Women can have multiple orgasms and men get one per… what was that? One hour?” he asked.

“I think your refractory time was under an hour,” she replied and began to wrap the robe around her body. As she tied the sash around her, she arched her eyebrow. “I could use a break anyway.”

Mulder handed her the beer and wine from the ledge before he got out of the tub. Scully set the bottle and glass on the bathroom counter and handed him his own towel.

“So what am I supposed to do with you the rest of the night?” he asked as he wrapped the towel around his waist.

“Let’s be wild,” Scully said with a wink.

“You want to put together that puzzle downstairs don’t you?” Mulder guessed.

“You know me too well,” she said with a laugh.

 

***

Mulder slipped his hand in the back pocket of Scully’s well worn jeans and smiled down at her as she did the same to him. They were standing outside the Stevensville Crab Shack, waiting on their take out order before taking a drive out to Terrapin Nature Park. There was a long boardwalk there and since he had no sea legs, it would be the most amount of water exposure they would find themselves appreciating that weekend.

There were at least fifty companies on Kent Island that offered charter tours around the island and if Mulder had any kind of ability to withstand the rocking waves of the bay, he would have suggested that immediately. Just watching the boats pass them by made his stomach clench and his insides feel murky.

“It’s nice out,” Mulder noted as he unzipped his windbreaker.

Scully nodded and moved in front of him to press her body against his. She looked up at him with the sunlight in her hair and a smile on her face. “I like it here.”

“Should we stay?” he asked, only half-joking. “Get a little house on the bay and run a crab shack?”

“You can’t cook,” she said with a mock pout.

“I can follow a recipe!” he argued lightly but it was true. His recipes hardly ever turned out the way the picture depicted and he found cooking to be more a hassle he practiced out of necessity. “Okay, so you’re the cook.”

Scully stood up on her toes in her white Keds and kissed his lips. She was doing that a lot more. The affectionate side of Dana Scully he knew prior to this was a gentle ruffle of his hair or taking his hand in dire times. This weekend she would reach out for him as she fell asleep or kissed him when she felt the need. Anyone who called her cold had no idea who she really was.

“You would be a terrible business owner.”

“My fish would agree with you,” Mulder said.

Scully pulled her hand out of Mulder’s back pocket and glanced down at her watch. “I’m going to use the ladies room. If they come out with our order, can you double check they packed the potato salad? I ordered it separately.”

Mulder nodded obediently and sat on the bench outside as Scully went to use the facilities. He put his arms across the back of the bench and settled himself to wait for the food and his - what did he call Scully?

Obviously, they were going to be exclusive. That wasn’t up for debate. Neither of them were very good at sharing the other when it came to work related issues let alone their romantic entanglements. At the beginning of their partnership, he remembered how jealous he felt when Scully told him about Jack, her instructor at the FBI. They had just become partners at the time and he felt an overwhelming feeling of jealousy and an unfounded territorial reflex. This was well after they had an encounter with Phoebe Greene but Mulder had never walked in on Jack and Scully kissing. He didn’t think he would have handled that very well then.

Even with Sherrif Hartwell, when Scully showed an obvious attraction to him, Mulder felt petulant and frustrated but helpless. He pushed them together out of some strange reaction to watching her actually have googly eyes over the country bumpkin. And if he had to testify about the whole event again, yes the man did have a slight overbite.

Not that it mattered now. Mulder was the one who was waiting on their take out order and was able to spend the morning with his head buried between her thighs as she called out his name.

A young man popped his head out the door to interrupt Mulder’s reflection and the teen adjusted his paper hat.

“Sir? Your wife ordered the small potato salad but your order comes with a small already? Can we just give you the large at no cost?”

“Oh… We’re not-”

“You were waiting on the take out?” the young man clarified and Mulder nodded. “So can we give you a large?”

“Can you?” Mulder repeated. “Uh, yeah that’s fine by me.”

“Great. It should be up in a second,” the young man said and disappeared back inside the Crab Shack.

Mulder started to think back about how things had unfolded when Diana returned to D.C. He felt some kind of familiarity when she returned, a support from an outside source but in the end it all felt wrong. He has a clear memory of Diana sliding into his bed with next to nothing on and reaching for him. He hated her for trying to rekindle something between them that had died before she left a hastily written note and cleaned out her half of their closet.

He remembered pushing her away and calling for Scully. That seemed to cool the temperature in his bedroom enough for Diana to realize he needed a doctor. They arrived at the hospital with Mulder screaming for his partner and pushing on Diana to leave him alone. By the time the smoking son of a bitch got a hold of him, he had lost all faith in Diana. At the end of it, she had saved him but she sacrificed him too.

What a fuck up of events.

If Mulder ran his fingers along his scalp, there was a small bump where the surgery had taken place. Thank god for Vitamin E Oil that prevented any keloid scarring across his forehead.

Scully emerged and sat down close to Mulder, leaning slightly against his chest. “Hey.”

“What’s up, doc?” he quipped.

“I was just thinking about last year,” she said as she ran her hand up his thigh.

“When?”

“When I was in Africa,” she started.

“The fact that I missed seeing you on a beach in linnen pants is truly a travesty,” he leered.

“I doubt anyone would have thought to take a picture,” she mumbled. “I was actually thinking about how everything unfolded.”

“You know, the life that was offered in that subconscious dream-”

“Your fantasy of being the father of two boys and a life in suburbia,” Scully interrupted.

“That wasn’t a life I wanted after I met you,” he continued. Scully’s eyebrow was on full arch and he held up a hand in defense. “Just hear me out. I mean that I stopped thinking of the life my parents hoped I would have - a life I gave up to work with you. I didn’t think of my future as something as banal as suburbia.”

“Suburbia wouldn’t be so terrible,” she mumbled.

“With the right person,” he countered. “Anyone else besides you in that dream sequence was the wrong person.”

“Why do you think your mind gave you Diana in that scenario?”

“Probably because I knew she was working with Spender,” he thought aloud. “You wouldn’t live one street away from CGB Spender by choice.”

“If I did, I might egg his house on occasion,” she muttered and tucked her hands between her legs.

Mulder pulled her hand back into his and kissed the back, rubbing the smooth skin across his lips. “You rebel.”

“So, you might settle down somewhere with bylaws about the length of your grass if it was with the right person,” she noted.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asked.

“Does that mean hanging up your badge?”

“Here’s your food, folks! Thanks for your patience!” the young man interrupted and handed the paper bag to Mulder. “Ma’am, your meal already came with a small potato salad so I told your husband we would upgrade you to a large for no cost.”

“Husband?” she said to Mulder and he could feel his idiot grin returning.

Scully nodded and they made their way to their car where plans for a beach lunch awaited them. It was a four minute drive but they moved their car due to the limited parking at the Crab Shack. Mulder would have given himself a pat on the back for being such a good samaritan until he saw the look on Scully’s face. Being good was second nature to her and therefore deserved no comment from him, who would have thoughtlessly left his car to take up a space from the business.

Down the Cross Island Trail and toward the marina, Mulder and Scully laid out their food on a picnic table with a quiet view of the bay. He shed his windbreaker and set it on the bench next to him while Scully dished out two paper plates of their feast.

“This was a great idea,” Mulder noted. “Who’s idea was this?”

“Yours,” she chuffed and used her thumb to wipe at a dab of mayonnaise on the edge of his mouth.

“I have some good ideas,” he noted and took a bite of his crab cake.

Scully nodded through a mouthful of her wrap and took a sip of her water. “Are you dodging my badge question?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. I want to find Samantha but I’m fearful my office isn’t going to be the vehicle that brings that to fruition,” he admitted. “There’s been so much that I’ve come to learn over the last few years and things I’ve seen that I can’t deny…”

Scully set her food down and reached across the table to take his hand in hers. “I won’t give up as long as you don’t.”

“What about you? Have you lost a purpose in what we’re doing?”

“Not at all. There’s truths we still haven’t uncovered,” she reminded him. “As long as the paranormal cases keep coming our way, I want to work with you. It’s been the most fascinating job I’ve ever had as a scientist.”

“And the man-candy in the office isn’t bad, either,” he reminded her and she laughed. “Right?”

“It’s been one of the job perks,” she admitted and Mulder did a fist pump that made her shake her head. “I didn’t mean to rush you by asking you about suburbia.”

“You’re not rushing anything,” he assured her. “I’ve been told I’m not a young man anymore.”

“Does being over thirty mean you can’t have dreams outside of a family?” she countered and his heart swelled. “Why can’t you have more than just one dream? Why can’t you search for the truth and have love?”

“Some might think that’s asking too much,” he muttered, thinking back to his induced fantasy where Diana lead him away from where the answers really were. “You shouldn’t search for the truth if you have a family.”

“It’s cost us too much not to keep looking Mulder,” she replied as she looked out to the bay. “I can’t stop just because this started between us.”

“Scully…” Mulder began.

“Yes?”

“Marry me,” he prompted.

“Oh brother,” she sighed with a roll of her eyes.

He was half-serious about the proposal. He wouldn’t stop asking on occasion just in case she ever decided on a whim being attached in matrimony to a man who was a joke to his peers and a pain to his superiors wasn’t such a bad life. He could get her a shirt that said Mrs. Spooky to wear on their honeymoon, if she was so inclined to take one. Or perhaps they could go someplace tropical where she could be in a bikini and he could rub coconut smelling lotion across her alabaster skin.

Maybe one day when they stop chasing monsters in the dark.

  
****

  
As Scully looked around the bedroom of their weekend rental, she put her hands on her hips as though it might help her see any items she missed. Mulder took another sip of his coffee from his spot on the couch across the room and went back to reading his paper.

“You got everything,” he assured her.

Scully crouched down behind the bed and stood up holding a pair of her underwear. “A-ha!”

“What a-ha? No _A-ha_!”

“Yes, A-ha, Mulder! I knew I would find something!” She put the hand holding the underpants on her hip and smiled smugly at him. “I would be mortified if the owners found these.”

“Are you sure those are yours?” he asked and pulled his paper back in front of his face.

Scully looked at the panties in question. “Yes.”

“Damn,” he noted.

“We have to be back in D.C. this afternoon so if you’re not going to help me-”

“I’m already packed. I put our bags in the car that were by the door and I left a tip on the counter for the cleaning service that’s coming by tomorrow,” he replied. “Have your coffee and relax.”

Scully disappeared behind the bed again and found Mulder’s tie. “See?”

“Now I’m sure you’re planting these around the bedroom,” he mumbled.

“ _Mulder_ ,” she almost whined and he set down his paper. “Can you help?”

“Scully, anything we leave here they can ship back to us at no charge or we can pick it up next time we have a free afternoon,” he replied in an attempt to assure her. “Sit down.”

She sat down reluctantly on the couch opposite him and he handed her a section of the paper.

“Do your crossword,” he ordered gently and hooked a pen onto the tip of her paper. “Deep breaths. Enjoy your last day off.”

Scully put her feet in Mulder’s lap and sighed but she clicked the pen anyway.

“Shut up,” she mumbled and he made a face.

 

***

After dropping off Scully, Mulder had arrived back at his apartment by two p.m. and he kept himself busy by sorting his laundry from the last week to deliver to the laundromat.

He liked the arrangement he had set up with them. Every week a new note would be slipped into his bag with folded laundry such as “lemon and seltzer water is good immediately after blood gets on these kinds of materials!” While that information stuck in his brain, he usually forgot before the notes were helpful. He had a standing order with a few of the shops in town and could replace a suit when he needed to. One of them even called him when they got new ties in and lately they weren’t the absolute worst. Scully hardly made faces at them anymore.

Maybe she had grown accustomed to them like a prisoner accepted their captor. Mulder looked at the striped black and blue tie in his closet he would wear to work tomorrow and wondered if he knew the difference anymore between good and bad ones.

It was a twenty-five minute trip to the laundromat that included his sheets and towels where Mrs. Palawski promised she would have his clothes ready by seven tomorrow morning. He could pick up the towels and sheets at closing, 5:30 sharp. He praised her for her hard work and took an oatmeal cookie from the jar by the register.

Next on his list was a trip to the grocery store. If he was actually going to follow through on his plan to be the kind of guy that kept food in his fridge Scully wouldn’t make a face at, he needed to purchase some of the items he watched her carefully pick out this weekend.

He found an old receipt in his car and began making a list that included Scully’s fancy flavoured beans and a small container of cream since he took his without. Vegetables would be good, Scully ate those. He had to make dinner for himself tonight so he picked up pork chops. He veered back to the produce area to get an onion and some potatoes.

As he stood in line, he picked up a bag of salted sunflower seeds and the girl waved it over the reader for him before he opened the bag as she scanned through his items.

“This is more than your usual juice and snack foods,” the girl commented.

Mulder looked up from the copy of National Inquirer to the young brunette who was smiling at him. “What?”

“You’re here every Sunday,” the girl mentioned and Mulder glanced down to her name tag to see that it read Mary. “You get seeds, juice, bagels and some kind of schmere, the occasional poptart or sidekick packs, individual popcorn bags and sometimes you buy a Hungry Man meal.”

Mulder pulled a shell from his mouth and popped in another salty seed. “I’m more of a take out kind of guy.”

The young woman, who he guessed was about sixteen, smirked at him. “So, what? You have a girlfriend now?”

“Yeah…” Mulder said with a frown.

He actually wasn’t sure if that was the right term for Scully. She was his romantic partner and any other time he might call her his girlfriend. The issue he had with the term was mostly that it didn’t seem to do Scully, and how he felt about her, justice. Scully was his everything but how did he say that to a stranger?

“Is that a bad thing?” she asked with a laugh as she brushed her hair back from her shoulder.

“No, I’m just wondering how you based that assessment.”

Mary shook her head and made a face. “If I told you, it might seem like I’m stalking you.”

“I’m a profiler with the FBI,” he encouraged. “Hit me with your best shot.”

Mary looked impressed for a moment. “Okay FBI, you have cream for your coffee but you never bought it before so you’ve either changed how you take your coffee which is unlikely or someone who might stay the night likes it. I’m not thinking you developed an ulcer…”

Mulder nodded for her to continue.

“You bought vegetables and fruit. The last fresh fruit items you picked up were apples and those tend to last a long time. This time you grabbed berries, bananas and oranges,” Mary pointed out. “You also picked up two decent-sized pork chops when you probably would just cook one for yourself.”

“You got all that from my groceries?” Mulder asked in amazement as he took out his credit card.

“You come in here every week, usually alone, but sometimes with that really nice looking red-head lady,” Mary explained. “I think that lady and you got physical. You’ve got a look on your face like something is different. Plus you have a hickey on your neck, just there.”

Mulder’s hand went to his collar on his shirt. “What?”

“Just kidding but that proves it,” Mary laughed again. “That’s really too bad about the girlfriend thing. I was going to ask you out.”

He frowned. “Aren’t you a little too young to be asking me out?”

“I’m twenty-three,” she replied frankly.

“Still too young,” Mulder repeated and took his card back from the young woman. “I’m… Much older than that and before you can say you don’t care, I do and I’m very happy. Thanks.”

“If you change your mind…” Mary called after him and Mulder shook his head. “Bye!”

He was still shaking his head as he got to his car and he noticed that Mary had written her phone number on the back of his receipt. Mulder crumpled the paper and shoved it in the side door of his car before getting back onto North Oak Street back to his apartment.

As Mulder pulled up near his building, a thought occurred to him that men in Scully’s daily life possibly made the same advances towards her. They had to. How could they not? If he thought about just her physical form, she was beautiful and had an amazing figure. On her off hours, her shirts were a little more fitted and feminine. She was seductive in her subtle displays of her femininity. She accentuated her curves without showing it all.

He was unloading his groceries into his kitchen as he began to think about how things have changed for him. The more basic side of Mulder’s hormones noticed the women with short skirts and low-cut blouses but the attraction to such sights had lost its lustre. It did more for his hormones to catch a glimpse down Scully’s blouse or a hint of her thigh under a fitted skirt as she crossed her legs. He realized that was a true sign of love as he felt himself getting hard just thinking about her.

The clock on his wall told him it was quarter-to-five and he would need to go out to collect his linens soon. He wouldn’t have time to soothe the ache and clean up before he had to back to pick up his laundry. He decided to hit up the liquor store on his way over to the laundromat to get more Shiner Bock and gin, because that liquor was the thing that ignited all of this. It seemed only fitting to have a bottle of that around as a thanks or in honour of the last week of events.

Just as he was returning to his building with towels and sheets in a plastic bag, his phone began to buzz in his pocket.

“Hold on,” he called to his phone.

The phone buzzed again as he pushed his knee against the wall for the laundry to balance on and he fished into his pocket with his free hand carrying the Arlington Liquor bag.

“Hold on!” he called again. He pressed the green “TALK” button and held the phone between his ear and shoulder. “Yeah!”

“It’s me,” a quiet voice replied.

Mulder recognized it immediately. “How’s your alone time going?”

“Quiet,” Scully replied. “Productive but quiet.”

“Any deep cleaning happening?” he teased as he tried to maneuver himself inside his apartment.

He hit the lights at his front entrance and smiled to see the unexpected guest on his couch. His desk light was shining toward her face. She was in leggings and a loose grey sweater without a stitch of make-up. She looked perfect.

“Hi,” he greeted her as he hit END.

“Hi,” she replied with a sheepish smile.

“Did you deep clean?” he asked again as he set the bottles and sheets on his dining table.

“I did some needed chores,” she said with a smile and put her hands on her thighs as she stood up. “After I dropped off my dry cleaning and got a few groceries, I realized something.”

Mulder put his hands on his hips and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Yeah?”

She walked toward him slowly. “I missed you a little.”

“Yeah?” he repeated with the idiot grin returning.

Scully shrugged. “I’ve never known a kind of love where I wanted my alone time to include the other person.”

One side of his mouth crooked up in a grin. “Yeah?”

“You can start saying other words now,” she teased him with a smile.

Mulder smiled a little and cleared his throat. “Uh well I’m just on the edge of my seat with what other kinds of confessions you might decide to put out there.”

“That was a pretty big one,” she replied softly.

“It was,” he agreed. His hand reached to her and he rubbed his palm up her arm. “How long have you been here?”

“Ten minutes,” she answered. “Long enough to see you did some grocery shopping.”

His cheeks flushed. “I did…”

“Thanks for getting cream,” she said quietly. “And dinner.”

“Can you stay?” he asked as his hands rubbed up and down her back.

She nodded. “I’d like that.”

Mulder grinned. “I like coming back to my place to see you in it.”

Of all the conversations that they had had, this was one of the most honest ones and simple. The fact was, he did like having her in his space and it made his heart actually speed up to know she wanted him around.

What an enlighting week.

  
****

Kisses in the kitchen grew fervent. That lead to the dishes from their supper being forgotten for more pressing matters. Scully’s fingers unfastened his belt buckle with expert deftness that impressed him as much as it aroused. She was on her knees as he stood with the kitchen counter biting into his back and her mouth engulfed him quickly and eagerly.

“Christ!” he hissed as her hot tongue enfolded around his length and her cheeks hollowed for a suction that made his eyes roll to the back of his head. “Oh… fuck….”

His fingers gripped at the laminate counter top as her mouth moved up and down in a quick and steady motion. Each time she reached the head of his cock, her teeth played along the sensitive nerves before she moved back to suck up and down again. It was a whirlwind of sensations that made him achingly hard for her. It felt intense and he fought the urge to thrust into her delicate mouth and grab at her hair. He knew better than that.

One of her hands was now massaging at the inside of Mulder’s thigh and she took his balls in her hand. Her fingers were cool to the touch as one finger slipped behind his scrotum and pushed lightly on the nerves there.

“Fuck,” he growled and he willed his knees to stay locked.

Her suction continued as her speed increased. He cooked her dinner, they drank two gin and tonics a piece and he was getting the best blow job this apartment had ever witnessed.

If he came now, it would be another hour before he could bury himself inside of her. There were other things he could spend time doing and perhaps that was what she wanted.

“I’m… Scully I’m close…” he warned her.

Her hand retracted from between his legs and she slowed her lips along his cock. The tip popped out of her mouth and she took him in her hand as she looked up from her place on the kitchen tiled floor. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Your actions and question are counterintuitive,” he sighed and shook his head.

“No, stop or yes stop?” she clarified and took her tongue to trace up the length of him. “Stop?

“Stand up,” he managed.

Slowly, she got off her knees and looked at him with a satisfied gleam in her eyes. Her mouth was wet from saliva and she licked at her lower lip.

“I would call you a tease but you’re really not,” he said as his hands went to the hem of her sweater. He pulled it off over her head and it was left near their feet.

“So what am I?” she asked as she reached to the clasp between her breasts and undid her bra.

“You’re irresistible,” he began as his mouth kissed down her neck. “Seductive…”

“Hmmmm,” was all she said as she took him in her hand again and stroked slowly.

Mulder’s fingers were making work on the waistband of her leggings. He had to pull away from her long enough to pull them off. His mouth kissed up her thighs before he helped her step out of the stretchy black material. Before he stood up, his fingers pulled down the black bikini bottoms she had on underneath.

“I swear to God, Scully,” he breathed. “You make simple black look like art.”

She tugged on the material of his shirt to indicate she wanted him to stand up. “I make it look like art?”

Mulder’s finger traced along her sex and through the trimmed hair where he found her wet to the touch. “You got like that from sucking on me?”

She nodded and turned herself around to brace her hands on the counter. “Like this, Mulder. I want it like this.”

His jeans were only open at the fly and he pushed them down his legs. They were joined on the floor with his boxers and T-shirt. Scully stood with her legs slightly apart and Mulder bent his knees to align with her before he pushed slowly and purposefully into her tight walls.

His arm crossed her abdomen to cup her breast while the other gripped her hip. He was buried to the hilt and if he rocked his hips just slightly he could feel her cervix.

Scully grunted as he pushed up slightly.

“Do you feel me there?” he asked as his fingers dug in.

“ _Yes_ ,” she sighed.

He pulled back slightly and he thrust up hard. “Is this how you wanted it?”

She nodded and her head dropped back as though in prayer for the sins they were committing. His hips pulled back and he thrust again but less harshly this time. They had made love and fucked several different ways over the last three days. If he could have her like this before they went back to work, he wanted to make it count.

Mulder’s middle finger found her clit and she clenched as he began to slowly circle the bundle of nerves with a gentle touch she responded to. He attempted a slow and purposeful movement of his hips as his finger sped up.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “Just like that! Oh!”

Using just his teeth, he grazed along the nerves there and he felt her clench. “Right there?”

He nipped and kissed at the muscles she would pull on after a long day in the lab or performing autopsies. His tongue soothed each spot he might mark with his incisors.

Mulder stilled his hips and he began to move his finger faster across her centre. Each pass across the nerves caused the walls surrounding his cock to tighten. It was true bliss to make her moan and shake while it also had added benefits for him. Any man who hadn’t figured out this small simple detail of sex was missing out big time.

“Oh!” Scully cried out again as his hips rocked against hers.

Her left hand covered his as it squeezed her breast and she wailed as the orgasm took over her body. It was almost enough to bring him over the edge too but he had plans for Scully and the fresh sheets back there.

“You didn’t…” she noted as he pulled out of her slowly.

“I had some very basic and primal ideas for you and I on my bed,” he confessed as he picked up their clothing.

“I have to say Mulder, I really appreciate how much you try to hold out for me,” she confessed as he guided her across the apartment to his room.

Mulder set their clothes on top of his dresser and turned to face her. “I might not always be as selfless.”

“You have other ways to make that up to me,” she replied as she sat on the bed. She leaned on the heels of her hands and looked up at him impishly. “I’m here on the bed. What did you want to do with me?”

“Everything,” he replied as he pushed her gently to lie down. As he climbed on top of her, he hooked his arm underneath her back and pulled her into the centre of the bed. “But for now I think I just want to have you like this.”

His body settled on top of her and she pushed her heels into the mattress as he worked his way inside of her again. She was tight like a fist and wet from her orgasm. He wondered if there would ever be a time when he could not be in awe of how amazing sex with her was.

Mulder pulled her knee up so that it was touching her shoulder and rocked against her hips again. “Right there. I can feel the very edges of you.”

“Oh god…” she moaned.

It was having her underneath him like this where he felt more in control. He leaned down to kiss her. Her mouth opened and she slipped her tongue past his lips to extend the kiss as his cock moved deep inside her. The sensation of the tip of his dick meeting her at the base was enough to build the orgasm that started when Scully got on her knees in the kitchen.

Mulder released her leg and she turned slightly onto her side. They both moaned at the new position and he pushed her knee into the mattress.

“Mulder,” she moaned. “Oh my god!”

His hips slammed into her repeatedly as the aching hardness inside of him began to climb to the edge where he teetered earlier. Scully clutched at the bedding and she looked over her shoulder as he was fucking her. This was the primal part of their evening he had hoped for but didn’t expect. She looked wild and lost in abandon. He loved her like this as he loved her in every other state of composure.

A grunt escaped him and he called out her name as he emptied himself inside of her. When he felt the tremors in his body stop, he pulled from inside of her and laid down on the bed next to her.

Her eyes opened and she quickly left the bed to use the bathroom. When she returned to the bed, he had pulled the sheets down and she laid back down on her stomach. The scent of her would be all over his apartment after she left and he could feel himself already missing her.

“I want to make a comment about how well we do that but every comment that passes through my head sounds self-congratulatory,” he confessed.

The pad of his finger drew up Scully’s naked back and she hummed in approval. There was a slight sheen of sweat on her body and her eyes were drooping as though she could fall asleep at any minute. The smile on her face and the kindness in her eyes was a sight he could get lost in.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Just a little sleepy,” she replied. “Long day.”

Mulder propped himself on his elbow and he leaned over to kiss her back. His stubble scratched along the sensitive skin there and her shoulder blades moved under his lips as though she was being tickled.

“You can sleep,” he told her gently and she sighed as he touched her.

There were a few moments of quiet as she closed her eyes again and her breathing slowed. It was a comfortable silence that he didn’t feel forced to fill with a monologue with interesting facts about something he read earlier that day in the paper or a snippet of information he had been dying to share with her but hadn’t had the time yet. Instead, his mind was working through the relationship conversation and qualifiers of what they might call one another. He had been itching to ask her all through supper.

Scully opened her eyes and studied him for a beat.

“What?”

“I can’t,” she disagreed. “I can feel you thinking over there.”

“You can?”

“You’ve had this look on your face all night like you wanted to clarify something with me,” she replied as she reached up to put her palm on his cheek. Her thumb brushed along his lips before she laid back down on the bed. “So, Fox Mulder. Out with it.”

“I suppose it started today when the girl who rings through my groceries asked if I had a girlfriend,” Mulder began.

“Did she,” Scully said sharply.

He could see the sparks of jealousy there. It was adorable but unnecessary. “It was more a comment on my change in grocery habits.”

“She seems to know you pretty well,” she commented a little more softly.

Mulder shook his head as he sat against the pillow at the headboard. “I couldn’t have picked this girl out of a line up. I guess she’s been my cashier for a while because she commented on the amount of food I was buying.”

“She was hitting on you,” Scully sighed.

“Okay, hold on though,” he protested. “If she was, which is irrelevant because I threw her number away-”

“She gave you her number?” she said as she rolled over and sat up straight.

“Yeah but I threw it out,” he repeated. “My question is, how often does that happen in your life?”

“Young women rarely give me their number anymore,” she retorted dryly as she put her hands in her lap. “I worry I’ve lost my looks.”

It was slightly distracting to Mulder that she was sitting completely naked, crossed-legged with her sex staring at him. Or he was staring at her sex. It was distracting.

“That’s not true,” he replied quickly as his eyes travelled up her torso to her face. They made eye contact and smiled as though they both knew what he was just doing. “How often do men make advances toward you?”

She tucked her chin down toward her chest as she thought about his question. “Not often.”

She wasn’t a terrible liar but he knew when she was trying to avoid telling him the whole truth.

“How often is not often?” he asked as he tapped on her knee with his finger.

Her tongue darted out to moisten her top lip and she sighed. “I don’t know, Mulder. It depends where we are. If we end up in an area where the female population is vastly less than the male population, it happens.”

“So when that EMT was talking to you outside the bus on our last case-”

“Yes,” she interrupted with a slight roll of her eyes.

“What about when we were at the take-out place on 5th two weeks ago and our order got screwed up?”

“The host tried to give me his number,” she replied.

“And the guy in the forensics lab who took over for Pendrell who is always calling you Dana?” Mulder pointed out as he began to itemize each encounter on his fingers.

“He’s asked me out a few times,” Scully replied but added quickly, “But he’s getting a divorce and with the kids, it just seems like a messy situation.”

“How do you know all that?” he asked.

“People tell you a lot about themselves if you just stop to listen,” she replied as she drew a finger up his thigh. “And… I am there quite a bit picking up samples and having unidentifiable goo looked at.”

“Unidentifiable _goo_?” Mulder repeated as he took her hand in his and interlaced their fingers.

Scully laughed. “Shut up.”

“So you get asked out,” he clarified as he was trying to get back to his original point.

“As do you,” she countered.

“Why…” he started. “I mean, why didn’t you say yes to any of them? Wait, did you say yes to any of them?”

“Mulder!” she admonished and pushed on his thigh. “No!”

His face scrunched into an obvious look of confusion. “Why not?”

“You,” she answered simply. She let out a long breath and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Last year when we encountered Padgett, he said he knew me. He knew that I was lonely and that I desired for you to notice me. I told him loneliness was a choice. But in all honesty Mulder, I never felt that lonely before we started this.”

“You didn’t?”

“This is so much better and I wouldn’t choose to go back to what it was like before,” she clarified and gave his hand a squeeze. “I just never felt like I was lonely to the point I would seek out a stranger for validation.”

“Like I did,” he replied inferring to Karin Berquist.

“I didn’t mean that but…” she shrugged as she released his hand placed both hands in her lap again. “Sure.”

“I didn’t know what her intentions were,” he admitted. “I read her wrong.”

Scully took his hand in hers again and patted it reassuringly. “It’s okay. We weren’t together. You don’t owe me-”

“I feel like I do Scully,” he interrupted. “I felt like I belonged to you before we slept together. I felt like you were mine.”

“Is that what you’re going to introduce me as to strangers, Mulder? Yours?”

“That was the other thought that was creeping into my head continually. “What are we?”

“Together,” she replied with a nod.

“But…” he started and shook his head. “I’m too fucking old to be called a boyfriend.”

“Careful,” she warned as she raised one finger.

“I just mean, we’re exclusive?” he asked and she nodded. “You’re not just my work partner…”

“Partner isn’t a _bad_ word,” she assured him. “It’s an ally, a companion, a friend, a spouse, a confidant and most importantly, the other half to a whole.”

“Telling you that you made me a whole person was the most romantic thing I’ve ever said to anyone,” he said thoughtfully and they both laughed. “Okay, so we’re partners.”

“As non-gender-descript and specific as it can get,” she replied with a smile.

“I like it,” he said as he nodded. He reached for Scully and kissed her softly. When their lips parted he pushed his forehead into hers and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Can you sleep now?” she asked.

“Yes. Set the alarm.”

She laid down in the bed and tucked one arm under her pillow while the other went to Mulder’s chest. He held her hand in his arm and within minutes he could hear her breathing slow as she drifted into slumber. Settled with their qualifiers on their relationship and his body satisfied with sex, he slept too.


	10. Chapter 10

It was the shrill sound of Mulder’s cell phone that woke them first. The sun was coming through the curtains of his bedroom but the clock on his bedside table had yet to alarm their awakening.

A long groan escaped him as he rolled over in bed to grab his phone. “Yeah. Mulder.”

“Agent, you have a case in Virginia that needs your attention,” Skinner said brusquely.

“What time is it?” he asked as he glanced at the clock. “Sir, why do you start Monday at six a.m.?”

“Agent Mulder, every executive agent at my level starts at six am Monday morning,” Skinner replied dryly. “I have a case file here for you to pick up.”

Mulder rubbed his face with one hand and sat up slowly in the bed. “What happened?”

“The crime scene photos won’t do it justice. I suggest you get to Pittsfield immediately,” Skinner replied. “And if you can get a hold of Agent Scully, let her know to meet you out there. She’s not answering at home.”

“I’ll see if I can track her down,” Mulder replied as he looked across the bed to where Scully was slowly opening her eyes and looking at him suspiciously.

It was adorable how she awoke with a questioning look on her face each morning as though she just wasn’t quite sure about him. She needed about thirty minutes of quiet before she was ready to converse and absorb new information. Waking her up with a case in the middle of the night taught him that much.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Fax the police report to Agent Scully and get there ASAP, Agent Mulder,” Skinner ordered and clicked off the line.

“Where is Pittsfield, Virginia?” Mulder asked as he set his phone back on his bedside table.

“In Virginia,” Scully mumbled into her pillow and closed her eyes again.

“Scully, I’m going to let that smart ass remark pass since you’re naked and I didn’t specify,” he replied.

Scully opened one eye and glared at him from where she lay in the bed. It was adorable as much as it was threatening.

“I’ll get the coffee on,” Mulder offered and she forced a grateful smile. “Bagel?”

His alarm sounded just then and Scully rolled over in the bed to groan as she threw an arm petulantly across her eyes. He hit the ‘off’ button on the alarm and kissed her stomach before leaving her to start the coffeemaker.

Standing in the same spot waiting for the machine to brew as he was last night when Scully sunk to her knees, Mulder felt his cock stir in his boxer shorts. Things had to slow down for his hormones soon but right now he was stuck in the “sex is new with you and I want to try it every single way” phase. Perhaps when you spent the last seven years telling yourself not to look at someone in a certain way, once you were able to, it became necessary to act out the fantasies you formerly chastised yourself for.

Most relationships in his past fizzled as quickly as they started. This had been brewing for seven years since she walked into his office in an oversized suit and an answer to every challenge he put in front of her. They liked each other right away even though they weren’t supposed to. In his mind, she was a spy and in her mind, he was nuts.

The machine beeped as the coffee finished brewing and Mulder turned to pour them each a cup. He slowly added the cream, careful not oversaturate the caffeinated blend. Scully liked some but not too much cream and he held his arm up to the cup to compare his skin tone with the liquid. If it was lighter than him, he did too much.

“Need some help?” she offered from the doorway.

She had his T-Shirt on from the night before and he was guessing not much else. Her hair was a mess and her skin was pink in all the places he wanted to touch again.

Mulder looked up from her mug and shrugged. “I know how much you dislike coffee that’s too creamy.”

She crossed the kitchen and took the mug from him. As she looked up through her lashes, she blew gently on the hot coffee. “Thank you.”

“I’m trying to decide if you’re being more flirtatious and sexy or if you were always this way with me and I was too oblivious to notice,” he told her as they walked across the apartment to his bathroom.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been blatant Mulder,” she commented and she took a sip of her coffee. “Mmmm, good.”

“I suppose of the infractions against inter-office rules of propriety, I’m the biggest offender,” he noted and took a sip of his own coffee. “This is good coffee.”

“Why you stuck with that other bean blend before, I’ll never know,” she replied.

“Is there anything around here you like?” he teased.

Scully took another sip of her coffee. “You.”

Mulder’s jaw dropped and he put his hand to his heart as though she just reported she had BigFoot in custody. He leaned down to kiss her but she held up her hand. “What?”

“I need to brush my teeth and I don’t think I packed a toothbrush,” she replied.

Mulder snapped his fingers and pointed to the ceiling. “I have a spare.”

He produced a baby blue Reach, still in the plastic wrap, and handed it to her with a flourish. That got a small laugh from her.

“Ta-da,” he declared quietly.

Scully set her coffee on the small cabinet over the toilet and pushed a small amount of the minty paste onto the brush. “Thanks.”

Mulder set his mug next to hers before he picked up his own lime green Reach to mimic her action. They stood at his sink in silence as they cleaned the sleep from their mouths, alternating turns at the tap. Mulder used his free hand to slip under the T-shirt she was wearing to touch at the bare skin on her backside and lower back.

After she rinsed out her mouth, she looked at him in the mirror. “That’s usually where you touch me.”

“Right there?” he asked as his fingers grazed past the inked snake and to the centre of her back.

“Yes,” she affirmed.

“That’s kind of low Scully,” he noted as he looked to where his hand was grazing under her shirt. He leaned past her quickly to spit out more toothpaste and rinse his mouth. “That wouldn’t be appropriate behaviour between agents.”

“Something tells me you knew it wasn’t, Mulder, and you didn’t care,” she replied with an arch of her eyebrow and he nodded slightly. “That’s what I thought.”

“I respect you,” he called after her as she left the bathroom and he got a look over her shoulder.

It occurred to him they didn’t have time to argue over the semantics of hand placements because he needed to get to wherever Pittsfield, Virginia was.

Scully, a woman who spoke up about things that bothered her in the slightest, had never once told Mulder to change where and how he touched her. She told him to move his car when he parked too close to the line so her car could fit in her space. She told him to stop turning the thermostat down in the wintertime because even though he ran warm, the rest of the human race in the basement, ie her, felt cold and didn’t appreciate needing a winter jacket indoors. She pointed out when the hotels he booked them in were worse than the usual crappy ones they stayed in because those she didn’t complain about. She really did put up with quite a bit of his single-man-habits and he put her through a lot including but not exclusive to sludge, slime and destroyed footwear.

“Mulder?” she called as she appeared back in the bathroom doorway in the clothes she wore there the night before.

He had yet to turn the shower on. So far he had been standing in a daze and staring at the baby blue and lime green toothbrushes in the cup in his medicine cabinet.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to take off,” she told him. She closed the space between them and kissed him quickly. “Bye.”

“See you in Pittsfield,” he said and touched his lips as he realized he had quick hello and goodbye kisses to add to the things he could look forward to in his day.

  
***

The halls of Pittsfield General were surprisingly busy for a small town close to Annasis, Virginia. The population sign on the outside of Pittsfield boasted 15,000 residents, however this hospital was the service medical centre for the area.

He was just about to call her phone when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Mulder turned to her and had a hard time hiding the smile of delight on his face.

“Uh, there you are. Heavy traffic?” he asked.

He was resisting the urge to kiss her hello or grab her and push her against the wall. Mostly the latter.

“Slow going,” she replied with a hint of annoyance as she held the thin file in her fingers. “Let’s just say I had ample time to read the police report that you faxed me.”

“Thoughtfully provided by the local authorities even though it doesn’t begin to tell the whole story,” he noted as they walked down the hallway.

He kept his hands in his trench coat pockets in case his extremities forgot they were working.

“Sheriff’s deputy is slain during a routine patrol,” she summarized. “It’s a tragic occurrence but I don’t see the mystery here, Mulder.”

“Except that the deputy was beaten to death by an invisible assailant,” he reminded her of that note in the police file.

“Yes, but that’s according to the young man who’s accused of his murder,” she countered.

Scully would have made an excellent lawyer, Mulder decided. She’s quick with a rebuttal, great at arguing her case and always loved the facts. She probably would have chosen to be a prosecutor because she likes to see the law come to fruition and see any lawbreakers behind bars. She could make sense of long legal briefs and put forth evidence for a judge, although she might not appreciate rulings. Scully wasn’t a sore loser but she definitely didn’t take bad news with grace the way one might think.

“One Tony Reed, and I’m guessing wrongfully accused,” Mulder countered as they approached the morgue doors. “He’s an ‘A’ student. Moved here a few months ago from Philadelphia. He’s never been in trouble in his life.”

Mulder opened the door for her to enter the morgue first and Scully saw the latex gloves waiting for her to pluck at a pair.

“Mulder, tell me you’ve got more than SAT scores to show that this Tony Reed didn’t commit this crime,” she asked as she worked the gloves onto her hands.

“Maybe,” he said from behind her. “Take a look at the body.”

She turned on the overhead light to the autopsy table and flipped the sheet back from the deputy. Her breath intake was noticeable and she looked back at Mulder who was feeling satisfied at her reaction.

“The _former_ Deputy Ronald Foster. As you can see, the report doesn’t quite do it justice,” he replied dryly.

“Oh, my God, it looks like he was hit with a sledgehammer,” she noted as she leaned in over the gaping headwound.

“Police flashlight,” he answered and she looked back at him again in disbelief. “One blow.”

Scully tucked her chin back before she looked over at Deputy Foster’s corpse again.

“The damage to the maxillofacial bones and the cranium is consistent with blunt-force trauma, but…” her words began to fail her as she tried to put this into terms of science. “I’d say that, uh, Tony eats his Wheaties.”

“Check out the back of his head,” Mulder prompted.

He had already seen the eyeglasses forced through Foster’s face but Scully hadn’t. This was part of how he laid out the evidence. Piece by piece with each statement of eyewitness reports until she had to put her seal of scientific approval on it. Whether it made sense or not, she somehow made it so when they provided a report to Skinner.

They bantered over the ability of Tony Reed’s abilities until Sheriff Harden interrupted them. He didn’t care for the introduction of another agent and Scully made an attempt to show their presence was to help solve the case. Harden didn’t care for it.

He made one last plea to speak with Tony Reed before they sent in the cavalry of the District Attorney’s office. Harden acquiesced eventually and Mulder convinced Scully to drive with him from the hospital to the police station.

Mulder took a sip from the take out coffee they purchased on their way from the hospital and turned onto Friar Road to get to the Sheriff’s Station. “Did Skinner get ahold of you?”

“He left me two messages on my home service and when I turned my cell back on I had three missed calls,” she replied.

Mulder glanced over to her before setting his cup down in the plastic holder between them. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him my brother was in town for his commendation,” she said and took a sip of her coffee.

“The party for your brother was on Thursday,” Mulder replied.

She shrugged. “He didn’t push it.”

Mulder parked the car and turned to her in his seat. “Really?”

“I have no reason to lie,” Scully reminded him.

“Yeah,” he noted as he turned the car off. “You’re not really the one who takes off without cause and shirk responsibilities for a less than trustworthy lead you might have gotten at two o’clock in the morning.”

Scully laughed. “I’m really not but next time I’ll leave my phone on.”

“Next time,” Mulder repeated with a smile. “So you might sleep over again on a school night?”

“It’s a definite possibility,” she said as she tucked her hair behind her ear. She must have seen something on his face because she cocked her head to the side. “What?”

He leaned across the car and kissed her lips quickly. “I couldn’t do that in the morgue but I was tempted.”

“I appreciate your restraint,” she replied as she wiped at the corner of her mouth with her thumb.

“I like your suit,” he complimented as his eyes travelled from her face down to the crisp white shirt against her black pantsuit. The way she was sitting against the door almost gave him a view down her blouse. “The neckline-”

“What about it?” she asked as her hand grazed along the edge of her shirt.

“Aesthetically pleasing,” he said carefully.

Scully took another sip of her coffee. “Mulder, I need you to get those hormones in check. We have to be law enforcement agents in there.”

“Call it an awakening,” he quipped and she rolled her eyes. “I’m serious. I’m a little too aware of you right now. You’re a babe.”

“Mulder,” she warned. “Try.”

He sighed. “I make no guarantees.”

“I know,” she muttered.

Inside the sheriff’s station, they needed to present their credentials and wait ten minutes in reception while the desk sergeant called out to Harden to confirm they had any business being there. It was surprising to come up against these levels of procedure and propriety after the staff in charge reported Tony had a friend visiting him.

Mulder brushed by Tony’s visitor in the hallway. Unsure of why he turned back to look at her giving him a knowing glance, Scully tugged on the sleeve of his jacket as though he had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“What?” he laughed defensively but now wasn’t exactly the time to get into that.

He made a comment about Tony Reed being lucky for female visitors but the young man wasn’t interested. At first, he seemed nervous at the presence of the FBI but after their attempts to relate to him, he brushed them off. He implied they were old and out of touch. He was annoyed to be explaining himself again.

“Well bear with us because we’re old and stupid,” he bit back and he could see Scully shift in his peripheral vision. He missed if he saw her smile at that comment but he felt like she might have. “How long was it between the time you heard the scream to the time you found Deputy Foster?”

The teen’s nonresponsive attitude was obviously weighing on Scully.

“Tony, you’re not likely to get a fairer hearing than this,” she pointed out.

It took too long for him to answer their questions. If Mulder was going to flex his profiling skills, he would report that Tony was hiding something but not his guilt in the murder. Every time he rubbed his fingers against his palms or he scratched at his nose, Mulder learned his ticks. If this was poker, he would have gone all in to bet against whatever Tony was bluffing. He brushed them off, he asked to go back to his cell and in the end they left with just a little more information than they arrived with.

“Sixteen years old and his life is over unless he starts telling the truth,” she noted almost dejectedly as they stood outside the interview room.

“If you really think he’s guilty, Scully, why don’t you ask yourself this: why wouldn't he make up a more plausible cover story?” Mulder challenged softly. “Why didn’t he say that a pickup full of hillbillies drove by and clobbered the Deputy and ran away?”

“I’m not saying he’s guilty, Mulder,” she stated. “I’m inclined to agree that Tony Reed did not commit murder but I think that he saw the person who did and he may be covering up for him.”

“I’m not sure there was a person to see,” he confessed. “I think there was a force at work here.”

“What kind of force?” she queried and he could hear a hint of sarcasm in her voice but he wasn’t biting.

“I don’t know. Some kind of territorial or spiritual entity maybe,” he theorized and ignored her sigh. “Poltergeists have long been associated with violent acts like this and they tend to manifest around young people. They seem to be drawn to the turmoil of adolescence.”

“Mulder,” she started.

It wasn’t the warning kind of ‘Mulder’ or the frustrated kind of ‘Mulder’ he was used to. She was being innocent and coy. Flirtatious. Her fingers reached to him and played at the bottom of his tie and her head tilted just to the side.

“Rather than spirits… can we at least start with Tony’s friends?” she asked as the material dropped from her fingers. “Please? Just.. for me? I think there’s one person in particular I’d like to talk to.”

She certainly got his attention that way. If he had spent an extra ten minutes in the shower trying to work out any excess hormones, they found a rebound in the feeling of her hands brushing against his shirt.

They were in public, for Christ’s sake. What was she doing?

He looked out the doorway to where Tony’s visitor in pink had left through earlier and back down to her where a false innocence masked her face. There was a rose to her cheeks and her tongue pressed on her upper lip as she watched his mouth.

Little minx.

“Okay,” he agreed.

***

The basement of the J. Edgar Hoover building housed extensive file storage, a bank of photocopiers waiting on repair and one wheelchair accessible bathroom. The stairs were off to the left of the long hallway toward Mulder’s office and toward the opposite end of that hallway was the only elevator shaft that met their floor.

From the limited access down to the basement, the arrival from either end could be missed if one wasn’t paying attention. If someone was in the middle of a heated debate or perhaps a lovers embrace, the hardened heels of a man’s size nine office appropriate loafer could be missed.

Mulder watched Scully’s eyes past him to where the door was closed. He looked over his shoulder to ensure that yes, he had pushed the small locking pin into the handle as they entered.

Her eyes closed and Mulder’s hands enveloped her waist and he pushed his hips against hers again. The urge to push her against the wall and kiss her had become overwhelming before the drive back to D.C.

It wasn’t exactly fair, the way she was shifting her weight and looking up at him with a secretive smile as they traded theories. While they interviewed Tony’s mom, Scully took the pen out of his hand when hers stopped working to make a note on her own notepad before sliding the instrument back through his fingers. As they stopped for a bite to eat, she took a piece of his chicken from his plate and had a healthy bite before returning the fried drumstick. She smiled coyly at him and told him she liked to try something bad every once in a while.

If it was just those instances on their own, he might feel okay. If she hadn’t been leaning forward on the table as she discussed Niels Bohr and quantum mechanics with a gleam in her eye, he probably would have suggested they go home and call it a night. Before last week and knowing the sweet taste of Dana Scully’s sex, he would have spent an extra ten minutes in the shower gratifying himself as he thought about her mouth.

Now, he knew exactly how it felt to be inside her and he wanted it again.

By the time they had made it back to the FBI headquarters and they had spoken at length at their cars in the parking garage, he felt a craving like a caveman with an impulse to drag her someplace and penetrate her.

He felt like a fanatic, desperate for his next fix of the high from making her mouth form a wide ‘O’ as she succumbed to pleasure.

“The door is locked,” she said as his fingers found the clasp on her trousers. “The door… Oh god… The door is locked.”

“The door is locked,” he assured her.

Mulder’s mouth found hers again and he kissed her with fervent need. He pressed his aching member against her leg and gave in to the urge to hump once.

It might make him feel slightly pathetic to be dry humping her leg like a dog except she was moaning at his touch. She wanted him too and that would never be a thing he could take for granted.

Mulder’s hand slipped past her trousers and down to her panties where he was delighted to find her wet to the touch.

“Scully,” he whispered.

“I need you,” she whispered back as she pressed herself into his hand. “Please.”

It was brazen for them to do this at four fifty-seven in the afternoon on a Monday and stupid. It was reckless and brash. He contemplated stopping until she thrust against his hand and his finger slipped inside her tight walls as her hand grasped at his cock through his suit pants.

“Mulder,” she moaned and nipped at his chin. “Now.”

He looked down at her wild eyes and gave her a slight nod. This wasn’t the time for lovemaking and slow passion. Scully wanted unbridled fervour and perhaps, a little rush without preamble and foreplay.

Mulder’s thumb moved across her clit as his finger sunk deeper inside and she clenched around him. “How did you get like this?”

“I spent the drive back from Pittsfield thinking about a specific bath I had this weekend,” she admitted as she undid the belt at his waist. Her fingers pulled the button on his slacks out of the loop and she pushed the zipper down with her wrist. “I thought about some other things too.”

Mulder grinned. “Yeah?”

“I was sure I had it out of my system after last night,” she replied thoughtfully as she stroked him with a gentle hand. “It turns out, I didn’t.”

Mulder kissed her with full intensity and pushed against her hand as the head of his cock slipped past her palm for her to stroke him completely. His tongue played against her palate and his thumb continued to make quick swipes across her clit as their pants fell to their feet. Mulder kicked them aside on the ash grey Berber carpet of the office as Scully loosened his tie further until the tail slipped from the knot. All this while her tongue massaged his with a practised skill that made him want her even more.

A whimper from her throat caused her to break the kiss and he pushed her hand away so he could align their sexes. In a swift move, he had her up in his arms with her back against the wall and slowly sinking down onto his cock.

Behind her head was a display map of the United States with Post-It tabs on areas of interest to them labelled in a colour coordinated system Scully had invented to prioritize cases. Her head was at the Wisconsin border and the Midwest never looked so good.

A mix of a grunt and a moan hissed through her teeth as he felt himself meet the hilt. Her small size and their concerted efforts made it advantageous for an orgasm. With her arms around his neck and his pelvis rubbing against hers at each thrust, they were moving in a quick unit for release.

Mulder’s hands gripped at her backside as he thrust harder into her and he felt his orgasm pending. He knew after a weekend in bed with Dana Scully that this kind of orgasm wasn’t automatic. For all the positioned they tried, this might be one of the successful ones but it wasn’t guaranteed. His was an easier feat.

“Can you come?” he asked breathlessly.

He would thrust and grind against her. Thrust and grind again and again. It was almost enough but he could see it wasn’t.

Scully looked pained to shake her head. “Not yet.”

The choice was simple. He set her down and pulled out in one motion before dropping to his knees. His one hand pushed her crisp blouse up to her breasts as the other moved between his face and her sex. His tongue searched for her clit and he felt her knees shake next to his shoulders that were pressing into her legs and holding her steady.

“Oh _god_!” she cried out and quickly covered her mouth with her free hand.

The other well-manicured hand was gripping his hair tightly as her pelvis ground against his face. The hand between her legs inserted two long fingers inside and he crooked them both forward. Another whimper escaped her mouth and he felt a rush of fluid hit his lips. He knew that wasn’t it.

He had spent the last four days between her thighs and he knew the telltale signs of each and every orgasm she had. He was well-versed and an apt student to each way she came. They were overwhelming and fierce to slow and soft but each time, there was a definite swelling of her walls around whatever part of his body he was using to fuck her.

Mulder moved his tongue back and forth across her clit as his fingers moved in and out of her. He could feel her about to come when she gripped his hair harder. She sighed a long and low moan as the orgasm taking over her body fought against the fear of being caught.

He felt himself twitch and he realized he had been stroking himself as he was fucking her with his mouth. He was slick with her arousal and he wanted to be back inside her again.

With his middle finger, he drew a definite line down the inside of her front vaginal wall and suddenly she was taught at his mercy. Her hips were grinding against his face and he was stroking himself furiously in tandem.

Before she was able to come down from the orgasm, he pulled her onto his lap and she impaled herself on his length. She was swollen and tighter than a fist but warm and welcoming like everything he’s ever longed for in a home.

Now they were riding the grey carpet with frantic thrusts. He could feel himself sweating under his white shirt and her cheeks were pink with exertion.

“Did you think about me like this?” she asked him as she whispered in his ear.

Mulder slipped one hand into the V of her shirt and a button popped as he palmed her breast. “I thought about this too often.”

She was bouncing on his lap and her breath was hot in his ear. She was asking him to tell her about every fantasy he had harboured about them in this office. He had too many to count. Over the desk, under the desk, against the wall and on the chair.

This surpassed each fantasy. She was unrestrained and wanton.

“I thought about it too,” she whispered in his ear and bit the lobe. “Just like this.”

He pulled her breast up and out of the nude cup of her bra and his fingers pinched at the nub of her nipple. “I bet you did.”

Mulder’s hand at her ass pressed her pelvis into his as he thrust up one last time and he succumbed to his final desires.

The high from the hurried frenzy of their coupling was wearing off as they panted on the floor behind Mulder’s desk. The absolutes of propriety and whether or not this was a good idea weren’t important right now. The look on her face wasn’t one of regret but he could see something there behind her desires. Maybe it was shame.

“Scully…” he started and she shook her head. “It’s okay.”

“We can’t do that again,” she admonished them.

Mulder rolled them so he was above her and pulled out slowly. He grabbed a box of Kleenex from the bottom shelf on his bookcase and handed her the item he kept in constant stock during her cancer. It was a sweet gesture on his part then and now.

Mulder took a few from the box and wiped off the fluids from his half-swollen member and tossed their soiled tissues into the garbage.

“What if the janitor finds that?” she asked as she stood up and looked around the carpet for her underpants.

“He’ll probably think it’s just me being gross,” he shrugged. Mulder pulled on his boxer shorts and pants and noted the look she shot him. He fished them out of the garbage and held them up as he watched her dress. “You want me to toss them in the bathroom bin?”

Scully took another tissue and wrapped it around the offending items in his hand. “I’ll do it. I have to use the bathroom anyway.”

“You want dinner?” he called after her as he put on his tie.

“Sure,” she called over her shoulder.

He took a heavy seat at his desk chair and glanced down to the slight wet spot adjacent to where he sat. He felt a sense of satisfaction about christening the office in this manner.

When Scully returned moments later she must have recognized the look on his face. “Stop being so pleased with yourself.”

“Why? I can’t help it,” he admitted as he stood up and approached her at the doorway with their coats. “I have too many reasons to smile now.”

“Mulder the optimist,” she noted as he helped her on with her jacket. “I could get used to that.”

He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “It’s all you, Scully.”

A flush returned to her cheeks and she shook her head at the involuntary reaction. “Okay.”

“So what do you say, Scully?” he asked as he grabbed their case file and a notepad before closing the door. “Ready to experience more excellence of the culinary skills of Fox Mulder?”

“Slow down there, big shot,” she said as she adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. “We’re going to my place. You can retire your apron strings for the night.”

Mulder nodded. “Fair deal.”

  
***

Scully set the plate of rice, chicken and steamed beans in front of Mulder and looked at him with a self-satisfied smile.

“Ta-da,” she announced with the same flourish he had used earlier.

It took him back for only a moment to waiting by a campfire that wouldn’t start and a bullet casing that could hold the key to warmth. Moth men surrounded them in the Florida woods and Mulder dropped a line about crawling naked into a sleeping bag with her. Of course, he choked when she told him he might get lucky.

He took a pull from his beer and sighed. “You can’t be chipper when you’ve just told me all those rules. It’s gloating.”

Scully sat at her place adjacent to him at the table and took a sip of her wine. “Pouting isn’t becoming on you, Mulder.”

“I have every right to pout, Scully,” he protested in a monotone he hoped expressed his deep frustration. “You’ve just told me about fourteen different things that mean hands off Monday to Friday.”

“Fox Mulder, you lie!” she argued and set her glass down.

Part of him really enjoyed that she used his full name when she was frustrated or annoyed.

“I do not lie,” he practically pouted.

“You misinterpreted everything I said. I didn’t say that,” she replied and sighed again. “I just don’t want a repeat of tonight’s reckless behaviour, Mulder. I think if we maintained a professional line of propriety including, but not limited to, at any FBI building, we should be fine. I don’t want a silly reprimand in my file all because we were acting like kids out of control. We’re-”

“Don’t say old, Scully,” he interrupted. “These kids calling us old has been bad enough.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she replied gently.

Mulder took another sip of his beer.

“Mulder,” she started and he slowly looked up from the meal still steaming from the oven. She reached across to his hand and looped two fingers through his. “Mulder. I don’t want us to slow down. I don’t want us to stop what we’re doing. I just don’t want sex in the office to be a repeat offence.”

He watched the regretful expression on her face and he nodded slowly. “So I can be your…. partner… but at work, I’m not your romantic partner.”

“Did you expect any less of a request for decorum?” she asked lightly as her fingers moved up his hand and to his wrist. She tapped at the inside skin a few times with her nails before retracting her hand. “Mulder?”

He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know, Scully. I wasn’t alone in the office-”

“I’m not saying I was coerced in the slightest,” she assured him. “In fact, I think I might have instigated it. I think we need some boundaries and I trust you to respect mine.”

He nodded and took a bite of the food on his plate even though he was feeling less hungry than he was prior to arriving.

“Mulder,” she repeated his name again. “I had a very nice time. I just don’t want the FBI to have any reasons for splitting us up.”

“They wouldn’t,” he said flippantly.

“They could. Nothing would surprise me,” she admitted. “Can you see how I might be worried?”

He nodded and conceded she was right. Part of him hated that she was right. They chewed in silence as he mulled over what she had told him. It wasn’t unreasonable of her to ask that he wasn’t groping her in the office but she also told him that she would have to fight the urges too.

“I don’t like boundaries,” he admitted after a few minutes.

She narrowed her eyes and him and he shrugged as though he didn’t know what else to say. It was the most honest thing he was going to say to her at that moment.

“I’m painfully aware of that,” she told him and she shook her head with a low laugh. “If that did happen again at the office, I would be more disappointed in us that we couldn’t try to be more professional.”

Mulder waved his hand at her in dismissal. “I don’t think anyone expects that from our department anymore.”

An auburn eyebrow arched on her face and she sighed. “Maybe you’re right but this isn’t exactly filling me with any kind of optimism.”

“What did you see happening once we’re back in the office day in and day out?” she countered.

Mulder chewed on a bite of chicken thoughtfully. When he swallowed, he set his fork down and contemplated her question. “More of what we have now?”

“You mean prior to last week?” she clarified and he nodded. “I think that’s fine.”

“So what did you mean with that whole thing earlier?”

Scully took a sip of her wine. “Fox Mulder, you really don’t listen to women, do you?”

“Apparently not,” he mumbled.

“When I said I don’t want kissing, I meant the kind that leads to sex,” she said and a pink hue took over her cheeks again. “I have a hard time controlling myself too. That’s new for me.”

That confession made him smile. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she replied and shifted in her seat. “I’m not some robot that can turn off my emotions-”

“I would never think that about you,” he interrupted.

She set her fork down. “If we didn’t have our work, without some answers that are still unknown to us, I would worry we sacrificed for something you might resent-”

“Scully-”

“I don’t want to be someone you resent in your life-”

“I would never,” he insisted with absolute certainty. “You’re the one thing in my life I have that I want until… well until I die. You’re immortal, remember?”

A look of confusion crossed her face because the conversation when Scully confessed this declaration from Clyde Bruckman was four years ago.

Mulder remembered the conversation clearly because it was an odd moment of openness from her. They were sitting in the rental vehicle before leaving St. Paul, Minneapolis.

She tucked her hair behind her ear and pressed her nose to Queequeg’s. The small dog licked her nose in response and she laughed before looking at Mulder with embarrassment. Mulder felt strangely drawn to her at that moment.

Scully cleared her throat and studied Queequeg’s face. “Mr. Bruckman had an idea for our end… In bed together.”

Mulder misinterpreted her completely at the time and his cheeks became hot. “Us?”

“No, him and I,” she corrected him and he nodded slowly. “But then he said…”

Mulder tilted his head down to try to catch her gaze but she was transfixed on studying the fur adorning her new pet’s head. “Scully?”

“He said I don’t die…” she replied finally. “Logically I know that it’s impossible. All organic life ends.”

“What about eternal life through the holy spirit of your God, Scully?” Mulder countered gently.

“Spiritual and everlasting life is a different kind. It’s not the physical form,” she replied. She scratched Queequeg behind the ear and Mulder caught a look on the dog’s face of territorial smugness. “Anyway, I don’t know why I told you all this.”

It was one of many conversations they had after her abduction that Mulder appreciated in his quiet solitude alone. He had no idea at the time those small conversations were the tiny seeds that made him fall in love with her. They were the seeds of friendship that made him feel less alone as the only man in his profession with the goal of uncovering the truth about aliens and a conspiracy.

Sitting in her kitchen that Monday evening, he wondered if Scully remembered that discussion in the rental vehicle.

Scully shook her head. “I’m not-”

“You are. You have to be,” he insisted gently.

She shrugged with a shake of her head in amusement. “Okay, so I’m immortal.”

Mulder nodded once. “Good. That’s settled.”

Her eyes narrowed on him again as she chewed on a buttery green bean. “What’s going on in your head?”

“It’s a lot easier knowing these limitations for mid-week make-out sessions are going to be hard on you too,” he said with a smirk.

“Shut up.”

  
***

A man like Mulder wouldn’t assume that watching television with Scully on a Monday night with her feet in his lap and the news on would have been his cup of tea for a night in. He also wouldn’t assume that some serious french kissing and spooning to sleep would have made him as happy as it did.

It was odd. He felt like himself but there were all these things in his life that were better. The towels at Scully’s place smelled like lavender and Downy fabric softener but they were just the right amount of softness. The sheets on her bed were obviously a higher thread count because they felt like lotion on his skin. He felt happy to fall asleep at ten-thirty p.m. without a television on to distract him.

Was he changing in a bad way?

As he brushed his teeth at Scully’s spotless pedestal sink on Tuesday morning, he watched her lather her body in lotion. When she then donned her lace bikini panties, he decided he wasn’t worse off. This relationship was no chain. This was no tether. This was a step up from every terrible moment in his single life including his Friday night take-out restaurant calling him at seven forty-five to make sure he was still going to make his usual order.

“Scully,” he started.

Scully pulled her bra up her shoulders and clasped the fastening at her back. She adjusted her breasts slightly and looked up to him. “Yeah?”

“I like… _this_ ,” he said quietly.

Scully put her hands on her hips as she tended to do however it was a much more pleasant sight in her half-dressed state. “This being the slight state of domestication we’ve found ourselves in?”

He nodded.

“Good,” she replied.

A small smile danced in her eyes and she kissed his cheek before leaving the bathroom to find the shirt and pants she chose half an hour earlier.

Mulder followed her into the bedroom and looked at the suit hanging on her closet door that he had brought over last night. He wiped at the corner of his mouth with the tip of his thumb and studied the tie around the hanger.

He felt Scully’s small arms wrap around his waist and she hugged herself to his back.

“I like this too,” she admitted.

“I was expecting a different transition,” he said as he rubbed his palms along her arms. “More difficult or more hiccups maybe?”

“Stay tuned,” she warned and he laughed a little. “I mean it. I worry a hiccup is coming.”

Mulder turned in her arms and looked down at her. She pushed her chin into his chest and a slight pout formed on her lips. It was adorable and sexy at the same time but the worry in his eyes distracted him from the wanton thoughts that were obviously lingering in his mind.

“What kind of hiccup, Scully?”

“I don’t know, Mulder,” she confessed. “Maybe when I finally have enough of you and I need space?”

He nodded. “Do you need space right now?”

“I think my mind is riding the wave of endorphins from multiple orgasms and the chemical-”

“Scully-”

“Not yet,” she answered finally.

“Me either,” he answered.

She sighed. “What about when it does happen?”

“Then tell me to put on my big boy pants and suck it up, I guess Scully,” he suggested and they chuckled. “I can handle a night alone when you want to impose it.”

“Tonight?” she asked.

“If you want.”

“Maybe,” she replied thoughtfully. “I have that research paper I was working on-”

“Say no more, Scully. I’m happy to hit up the Y, shoot some hoops and harass you by phone at nine thirty when my need to hear you admonish me about my dinner gets to be too high.” He kissed the tip of her nose and saw so much appreciation in her eyes, he could feel his want for her growing. His emotional and physical response to her were directly tied to one another. “I want this to work. I don’t want something to come between us that shouldn’t.”

“Me too.”

Mulder pulled her hands from his waist and kissed her fingertips. “Then you really should get dressed because Chuck is on his way to my office and your attire is very distracting.”

Scully glanced between them then nodded her head toward her unmade bed. “One more for the road?”

It was a slow and sweet kiss that followed her suggestion. They fell into bed in a tangle of limbs and moans before Mulder made her cry out to God above and her next door neighbour knocked on the adjacent wall to her bed. Scully climbed on his lap afterwards and held his hands as she rode him until he yelled her name.

The scruff from his face he had yet to shave off that morning would cause a slight burn to the alabaster skin along her neck. It required a turtleneck in the middle of a warm weather streak and a reluctant grin from Mulder when he pointed it out. Scully sighed and admitted it was better than a hickey. They were investigating teenagers, not supposed to be acting like them with love bites.

What adventures in love would await two people who have seen the monsters of the unknown, the worst of humanity and the underbelly of a spaceship in Antarctica.

Until a hiccup arrived, Mulder would take every ounce of the half-domestic bliss offered. For as long as they had been partners and friends, this was a new beginning. They were just getting started.  


End file.
